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Home , 1980 Moradabad riots, Abul Hashim, Achintya Kumar Sengupta, Ajit Bhattacharjea, Anisuzzaman, Badruddin Umar

UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date:______

I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:

It is entitled:

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: ______

Citizenship and in Post- , 1947-65.

A Dissertation submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctorate of Philosophy

In the Department of of the College of and Sciences

19 April 2006

By

Haimanti Roy

M. A. University, New , , 1998. B. A. Presidency College, , India, 1996

Committee Chair: Barbara N Ramusack

Abstract

This dissertation focuses on the Partition of Bengal in 1947 and its aftermath to 1965 to examine how India and legitimized and symbolically reproduced markers of national identity. It argues that specific concepts of what constituted loyal citizens, Partition violence and legitimate victimhood critically influenced the establishment of post-Partition states in the

Bengal region. Through the themes of national imagination, politics, violence and refugee rehabilitation, this dissertation explores the official and unofficial processes, which sought to produce national identities of and as Indians and . These conflicting attempts to homogenize national identities in religious terms were contested in the post partition period, as identities based on region, and culture competed for primacy.

The dissertation argues that on the eve of Partition despite increasingly communalized spaces, multiple imaginings of nationhood existed. Political contingency rather than the historical trajectory of “” guided the decision to divide Bengal. The Partition and nationhood are addressed through the examination of the social and economic impact of the new border and the sporadic violence, both physical and psychological that especially targeted minorities, Hindus in and Muslims in . Along with territorial delimitation, minority citizens became intricately linked with the evolution of national identity, self definition and legitimacy of each state. The dissertation also focuses specifically on the trans-territorial relationship between the Indian state and Hindu migrants from East Pakistan who strategically claimed to be “refugees” in order to demand Indian citizenship. Finally this dissertation complicates normative discourses of national identity formation and the uncritical understanding of “secular” India and “Islamic” Pakistan.

iii Acknowledgements

This project, which began eight years back and has undergone many mutations and digressions, would not have reached completion without the generous support of many individuals and institutions. First, I would like to thank my supervisor, mentor and friend Barbara Ramusack for her encouraging comments, meticulous reading, sharing her vast knowledge of Indian history, teaching me the skills to become a good researcher and most importantly, keeping me on track. She has provided both support as well as a home away from home introducing me to the different facets of American academia and life in general.

I am indebted to Maura O’ Connor, whose unbridled enthusiasm for my different projects at the University of Cincinnati has been a constant source of inspiration. Her friendship and support throughout my years in Cincinnati and beyond are deeply appreciated. Martin Francis and Laura Jenkins, who also served on my dissertation committee, provided incisive comments and suggestions that have greatly enriched this dissertation.

I owe an intellectual debt to individuals in multiple locations and from different points of the research. In Calcutta, my teachers at Presidency College, especially Rajat K

Ray significantly shaped my intellectual trajectory. Anjan Ghosh generously shared his thoughts and his research with me. Gautam Bhadra encouraged me in early 1997 to look at newspapers as a viable source for popular contemporary opinion. At Jawaharlal Nehru

University, my professors taught me to think beyond historical “facts and figures” for which I am most grateful. I owe special thanks to Neeladri Bhattacharya, Sabyasachi

Bhattacharya, Rajat Datta and Susan Viswanathan for encouraging me to pursue a PhD.

iv In Cincinnati along with the members of my dissertation committee, I have greatly benefited from discussions with Man Bun Kwan, Willard Sunderland, Laura Jenkins and

Ann Twinam.

Institutional support for my project has come from various sources. A pre- dissertation research grant from the Program of the Social Science Research

Council and another from the Cincinnati Chapter of the English Speaking Union supported my initial forays to the archives libraries in Britain, India and Bangladesh. A

Distinguished Dissertation Fellowship from the Graduate School at the University of

Cincinnati allowed me to research extensively in , , Calcutta (Kolkata for those who are historically challenged) and . A fellowship from the Charles

Phelps Taft Memorial Fund enabled me to write a substantial portion of the dissertation without having to worry about material needs of the daily life of a graduate student. The assistance and interest of the librarians at the Oriental and Collections,

London, the Nehru Memorial and Museum Library, National Archives of India, Central

Secretariat Library in New Delhi, West Bengal State Archives, of West

Bengal Police Archives, SB Branch, National Library in Calcutta, Dhaka University

Library, and the Bangladesh National Archives, especially Md.

Hashanuzzaman Hydari, are most appreciated. Hope at the Department of History helped in smoothing out the bureaucratic aspects of being an international graduate student. Mikaila Corday at the Interlibrary Loan section of the Langsam Library at the

University of Cincinnati provided valuable help in procuring relevant materials from other libraries.

v In Britain, Bangladesh and India many scholars have put me in their debt for their intellectual and emotional support. In Britain Joya Chatterji extended significant suggestions about specific sources. In Bangladesh Shaukat , Sonia Amin,

Anisuzzaman, Ratanlal Chakrabarty, Meghna Guhathakurta, Ahmed Kamal, Ameena

Mohsin and opened their hearts and homes to me. Irfat (Bithe) Ara extended comradeship during the lonely hours at the Bangladesh National Archives.

Wajid Hasan , Iqbal and Rizwana have become wonderful friends. The

Daulas and the Rays were generous and gracious hosts during my time in Dhaka and introduced me to different aspects of Indian diplomacy and Bangladeshi politics. Willem

Van Schendel, Gautam Ghosh, Geraldine Forbes and Ian Petrie provided thoughtful suggestions and unselfishly shared their knowledge about and history and introduced me to their friends there.

Friends have been an important part of my life and this project by creating space for diversions, volatile and non-volatile discussions and camaraderie through the rigors of research and dissertation writing. Rahul Nair and Sayata Ghose have been constant companions much before this project began. The J.N.U. cohort of Varuni Bhatia,

Shubhra Bhattacharjee, Sabyasachi Dasgupta, Sharatee Ghosh, Mahesh Gopalan, Alita

Nandi, Raisur and Aparna Vaidik provided intellectual and social adventures.

My life in Cincinnati became more interesting and lively because of my friends Anuradha

Agarwal, Amitava Bhaduri, Madhubanti Mukherjee, Meeta Sinha-Raghavan and

Priyanka Srivastava. Credit goes to the old Presidency gang, Hira, Koel, ,

Samarpita and Sangeeta for keeping in touch over the years. Thanks also to those friends who defy neat groupings, Monica Bhattacharjee, Rajoshree Bhattacharya, Prasanta

vi Chakravarty, Neeti Nair, Sharmadip (Toy) Basu, S. Sasikant and Samikhsa Sherawat for making the research and writing period enjoyable. The last section of the dissertation was written amidst a move to Cambridge, MA where Nandini Manjrekar, Jeff Ravel and

Cristelle Baskins made the transition to a new place a welcome experience. I am indebted to David Ciarlo for the last minute technical help that ensured that this dissertation became suitable for the digital age.

This dissertation would not have been possible without the love and encouragement of my parents Haripada Roy and Gouri Roy and my sisters, Anindita Roy and Priyadarshini Roy. In addition to their unconditional support, I have greatly benefited from my father’s knowledge of the intricacies of the Indian bureaucracy. My family in the U. S, the Nairs, Anupama, Rajiv, Puja and Vivek, have ensured I get all the love and comforts of home away from home. My parents-in-law, late K. N. Syamasundaran Nair and P. A. Sarojini, have always encouraged me to keep on writing even if it meant less visits with them.

Last but not the least, I would not have come this far without the loving support of

Rahul Nair, who has been a constant source of suggestions, questions, criticisms and inspiration. He has always been there, emotionally and intellectually, persuading me to rethink some of my assumptions about traditions, and life in general and to enjoy the process of becoming a historian.

vii CONTENTS

Abstract iii Acknowledgements iv List of Abbreviations ix Note on Terminology x

1. Introduction 1

2. Fractured : The Demand for Partition 26

3. The Making of National 72

4. Quest for Citizenship: Minorities and the Requisition of Property 117

5. Ecology of Fear: Violence in Post-Partition Bengal 169

6. Partitioned Identities and the Politics of Rehabilitation 218

7. Conclusion 269

Bibliography 275

Appendix 290

viii Abbreviations

AICC All India Congress Committee AIML All India BNA Bangladesh National Archives BPCC Bengal Provincial Congress Committee BPHM Bengal Provincial BPML Bengal Provincial Muslim League CAP Constituent Assembly of Pakistan CID Criminal Investigation Department EBLA Legislative Assembly DM DUL Dhaka University Library FIR First Information Report FR Fortnightly Report GOEB Government of East Bengal GOWB Government of West Bengal GOI HM Hindu Mahasabha IB Intelligence Branch ICS IG Inspector General INA KPP Krishak Praja Party NAI National Archives of India NMML Nehru Memorial Museum and Library OIOC Oriental and India Office Collections RCRC Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council SP Superintendent of Police UCRC United Central Refugee Council WBPSB Special Branch WBSA West Bengal State Archives

ix

Note on Terminology

After 1947, East Bengal formally changes its name to East Pakistan in 1956. It becomes Bangladesh in 1971 and I have not used the term unless referring to the period after 1971.The records use both names alternatively between 1947 and 1965. I have used East Pakistan and East Bengal interchangeably. I have tried to be specific when it comes to the policies of the Government of India and those of Government of West Bengal. However, records at the Bangladesh archives, at times do not indicate whether the policies of the East Pakistan government formulated at Dhaka were independent of inputs from the at . Unless indicated otherwise I use Pakistan to alternatively mean East Pakistan. I have used the old forms of Dacca and Calcutta to depict the cities of Dhaka and Kolkata respectively.

x

Chapter 1

Introduction

Partition as the ‘other face of freedom’ remains an apocalyptic event within South Asian popular imagination, reinforced by family and personal memories of violence, exile, movement and resettlement. Within these memories, Partition lingers as an ‘inexplicable’ event, whose heteromorphic violence and uprooting engendered the agonized transition from the old to the new, and the search for security within one’s own country that had also become a foreign country.1 Alternatively, national histories of India and Pakistan have sought to confine the narrative of the Partition as a hypertext to the grand narrative of anti-colonial struggle and to the creation myth of states, rehearsed periodically as an explanation of , of political accommodation and the achievement of the most important political prize of all, nationhood.

In Bangladesh, which came into being in 1971 from the erstwhile East Pakistan, the

Partition of 1947 has receded from both political and public memory to accommodate a seamless history of Bengali/Bangladeshi national identity from 1905. Moreover, in contemporary South

Asia, Partition has become an easy accessory regularly brought out of the political closet to explain inter- tensions among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh and to ascribe culpability to the ‘other’ side of the border/s.

The dissonance between political, public and personal memory is amplified when confronted with issues of territoriality, identity and citizenship. The specter of Partition continues

1 Amit Chaudhuri, “ Partition as Exile,” Editorial, The Telegraph, 9 July 2000: http://www.telegraphindia.com/archive/1000710/editoria.htmhttp, Internet; Accessed 21 December 2001.

1 to be a primary signifier through which the nation states seek to negotiate territoriality and national identity and through which refugees and minorities justify claims of belonging and citizenship. Partition thus remains an ‘active category’2 which continues to define political, social and popular lives of the people in the partitioned provinces.

The Partition of 1947 resulted in a truncated subcontinent dividing the provinces of

Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east along religious lines and marked the birth of the nation states of India and a spatially fragmented West and East Pakistan. Partition also engendered the largest recorded in history amidst horrific mass violence. Between 1946 and

1965, nearly nine million Hindus and moved into India and approximately five million

Muslims moved to both parts of Pakistan.3 This dissertation focuses on the Partition of Bengal and the subsequent re-ordering of national identities in West Bengal and East Pakistan. In post

Partition Bengal, the discourse over citizenship animated the project of ‘nationalizing the nation.’4 Who were the rightful citizens of the new nations and how could such claims be made?

Did minorities, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in India, by crossing the international border become refugees and have automatic rights to demand citizenship? I argue that the new nation-states or their minorities did not assume such identities and issues of citizenship. Rather, they were produced categories debated within the hallowed walls of officialdom in Delhi,

2 Ranabir Samaddar, “The Last Hurrah That Continues,” in Ghislaine Glasson Deschaumes and Rada Ivekovic ed. Divided Countries, Separated Cities, The Modern Legacy of Partition (New Delhi: , 2003), 21-35.

3 There are varying assessments on the exact numbers. According to Government of India estimates, 4.5 million Sikhs and Hindus left their homes in West and migrated to India and 5.5 million Muslims moved from different parts of India to . After Partition (New Delhi: Government of India, 1948), 50. In Bengal, the Government of India’s Census of 1961 recorded around 3 million displaced non-Muslims from East Pakistan. A million and half Muslims left West Bengal for East Pakistan in the two decades after the Partition. Joya Chatterji, “Of Graveyards and Ghettos: Muslims in Partitioned West Bengal, 1947-67,” in and Asim Roy ed. Living Together Separately: Cultural India in History and Politics (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005): 228, 222-249.

4 Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.

2 Calcutta and Dacca and given legal sanction through ordinances and laws debated and passed by parliamentary and state legislations. Categories of identity such as evacuees, refugees, displaced persons, aliens, and infiltrators became imbricated within the process of establishing post-

Partition national orders. Further, these identities were produced discursively, mediated through the actions of petty officials located at the periphery of the nation, especially at the borders and diplomatic missions. Refugee documents, border slips, passports thereby became the lingua franca through which the Indian state sought to differentiate between the refugees, migrants, aliens and its citizens.

This dissertation examines the different ways in which minorities in India and Pakistan negotiated and contested the terrain of official policies that sought to ossify religious affiliation and fix their citizens’ identity primarily as members of majority and minority communities. In post-Partition Bengal, socio-political and economic tensions donned a communal color because of the ready availability of the narrative of religious animosity which the official policies of India and Pakistan reinforced. Colonial understandings of community identity through religion continued to inform policy decisions after 1947 as both states sought to claim their rightful citizens.

However, ‘tangible’ forms of identity implicitly demanded the intangible proof of victimhood. Official of a specific paradigm of Partition violence which upheld the large scale and cataclysmic riots in Punjab of 1947-48 as standard, informed and operated within policy decisions. The small scale and chronic nature of violence in post-Partition Bengal thus remained outside the plausible ambit of Partition violence and rendered the Bengal Partition as a site of unwarranted and illegitimate victimhood.

3 In addition to victimhood, both Indian and the East Pakistani states formulated other tangential methods to define citizenship within their respective boundaries. Property ownership of the minorities became an intrinsic way to establish a minority citizen’s loyalty to the state.

Like victimhood, determination of such loyalty remained undefined and susceptible to contingent political, social and economic contexts and was predicated on the successful negotiations between minorities and the nation-states. On their part, minority Hindus in East Pakistan and

Muslims in West Bengal repeatedly contested such official attempts to define national space and identity. They did this through persistent movement across borders, the maintenance of family ties and the of new ones in partitioned Bengal.

Pre-histories of Partition

The extensive scholarship on the Partition remains problematic in several crucial aspects.

First, the Partition serves as a template for the re-invention of national histories of India and

Pakistan. Partition in these national narratives is represented as the momentous culmination of an anti colonial national struggle that acceded to the division for the sake of a larger Indian unity or as a unilinear movement towards national self –representations of distinct communities.

Paradoxically, while Partition persists as the ‘defining moment’ for those engaged in re- interpreting cultural and national identities in contemporary South , Partition historiography continues to remain trapped within a teleological and chronological barrier of 1947. In turn, this axiomatic end-date for historical enquiry has led to the creation of ‘pre-histories’ of the

Partition,5 to an obsessive focus on the high politics that preceded the event in the attempt to

5 Gyanendra Pandey, “The Prose of Otherness” in David Hardiman and David Arnold, ed. Subaltern Studies, Volume VIII (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), 188-221.

4 explain why it happened6 and to assign ‘responsibility’7 to either the negotiations between the

British and the major Indian political parties, the and the Muslim

League or to the actions of leading political figures such as Lord Mountbatten, Jawaharlal Nehru,

Mohammed Ali Jinnah and . 8 The contradictions within high politics in

India were sought to be resolved through the construction of Muslim or

‘communalism’ as the evil doppelganger of ‘secular’ . Further, Partition in these analyses remained embedded within competing paradigms of nationhood and decolonization and failed to differentiate between the three Partitions of India, Punjab and Bengal.9

6 Fueled by the publication of the Transfer of Power Papers, historical scholarship on the endgames of and the Partition began to emerge from the 1970s. For varied empirical analyses on the causes of Partition, see Anita Inder Singh, The Origins of (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1987); David Page, Prelude to Partition, Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control (New Delhi: Oxford University Press 1982); Robin Moore, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1983); Ajit Bhattacharjea, Countdown to Partition, The Final Days (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1997).

7 Writing on the Partition began as early as 1947 itself, in the form of official inquiries, memoirs and eyewitness accounts by British and Indian officials. For example see M. L. Darling, At Freedom’s Door (London, 1949); Sir Francis Tucker, While Memory Serves (London, 1950); A. Campbell , Mission with Mountbatten (London, 1951), P. Moon, Divide and Quit (London, 1961); G. D. Khosla, Stern Reckoning (New Delhi, 1949); V. P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Bombay, 1957); M. A. K Azad, India Wins Freedom (: Longmans, Green and Co., 1960). Most of these books have received a new lease of life as reprints became easily available to the public in in the late 1980s and 1990s. Their popularity confirms the idea that narratives of the Partition continue to capture and inform the public imagination.

8 See , The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, The Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge, 1985); B R Nanda, Mahatma : A Biography (New Delhi, 1958), S. Gopal, Jawaharlal Nehru: A Biography (1975). The Indian Government aided the project by the publication of personal writings of Gandhi. See Collected Works of (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India, 1958-73), and S Gopal ed. The Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972); Z.H Zaidi, ed. Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers (: National Archives of Pakistan, 1993, Distributed by Oxford University Press, 2000).

9 Few academic scholars find it problematic to use the Punjab experience as the quintessential Partition experience. In recent years, some have problematized it briefly. See, Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries: ’s Partition (Delhi: , 1998), 12; Mushirul Hasan, “Memories of a Fragmented Nation: Rewriting the Histories of India’s Partition,” Economic and Political Weekly (10 October 1998), 2662; Pandey, Remembering Partition, 18.

5 From the late 1980s historical enquiry on the Partition shifted its focus from the

‘national’ to the ‘provincial’ arena of high politics.10 But a shift in structural focus did not entail a shift in historiographical focus that remained firmly directed at the level of high politics. In the case of Bengal, such enquiry involved a reassessment of provincial identity politics in the vis-à-vis national politics. The political dissensions between the All India platforms of the

Congress and the League and their provincial counterparts are now well documented.11 Scholars such as Shila Sen, Bidyut Chakrabarty, Haroun or Rashid focus on different points within

Bengali politics that in their view marked the crucial turn away from anti-colonial nationalism and led the path to ‘separatism’ or communalism.12

One of the paradigmatic problems that has haunted the historiography of the Partition is the communal-national binary that seeks to explain communalism as the causal force which at the expense of nationalism, marked the inevitable path towards Partition.13 Historians of both the

Nationalist and the Cambridge schools become strange bedfellows in sharing this binary.

Although the former undercuts their own emphasis on anti-colonial nature of different communities by isolating the Muslim League as a ‘communal’ organization, the Cambridge

10 For the broad trends in the Partition historiography see Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Introduction: The Place of Partition in South Asian Histories,” in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London: , 2000), 1-28.

11 Jinnah’s control over Bengali politicians such as Fazlul Haq and HS Suhrawardy was tenuous at best. For differences between the All India Muslim League and the Bengal Provincial Muslim League, see Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal, 1937-1947 (New Delhi: Impex India, 1976) and Haroun or Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengali Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906-47 (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 2003).

12 The coalition politics that ensued after the All India Congress failed to capitalize on their win in the provincial elections of 1937 has been seen also as a lost opportunity for Hindu Muslim unity in Bengal politics. Haroun or Rashid argues that the failure of a Congress-League coalition after the 1946 elections prepared the ground for increasing communal hostility.

13 For a detailed critique of ‘communalism’ see Ayesha Jalal, “Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Identity in South Asia,” in and Ayesha Jalal eds. Nationalism, Democracy, and Development: State and Politics in India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997) 76-103.

6 historians fail to take cognizance of the quintessential nature of that evolved specifically as an anti-colonial struggle. However, the hegemonic ambit of Indian nationalism depended on its ability to accommodate multiple sub- that existed and contributed to the larger imagined community. Nationalism thus advocated was inherently inclusive in its attempts to encompass and project a plural nation irrespective of class, , religious, regional or ethnic affiliations. However, the rules of the game began to change with the introduction of separate electorates for different religious communities in 1909. The Morley-Minto Reforms or the Indian Councils Act of 1909, which upheld the rights of separate representation, were successful in politicizing religious identities.

By the 1930s, the Indian National Congress, the vanguard of the anti-colonial nationalist struggle, faced opposition from the Muslim League that claimed to represent the interests of the

Muslim minority of the subcontinent. It is important to note here that the demand for Pakistan that the Muslim League declared as its goal in 1940 did not indicate Partitioning of India as a method of creating a separate Muslim homeland. Further, the geographical coordinates were tactically kept vague in the hope that it would appeal to the largest possible constituency.14 In

Bengal, the League’s success depended not only on its ability to find an agrarian base but also on the All India Congress’s refusal to form a coalition after the 1937 provincial elections that fractured the possibility of Hindu-Muslim political unity. Further, Muslim politics in Bengal during the 1930s and 1940s remained non-hegemonic in relation to Bengali minority reflecting its subalternity.15

14 Jalal, The Sole Spokesman, 119.

15 Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal” in The Present : Essays in Political Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 45.

7 In the case of Bengal, one of the main proponents of the communalism-nationalism binary is Joya Chatterji, who explains the Bengal Partition as an event that Hindu communalism engendered. She argues that the public demands for partition and a separate “homeland for

Bengali Hindus” on eve of partition reflected the end result of a decisive shift “from nationalism to communalism” that had marked Bengal politics and identity from the 1930s.16 Chatterji attributes a central role to elite in spearheading the campaign that led to the fateful division of the province in 1947. Having identified the main actors in the promotion of

Hindu communalism, she then makes the problematic leap to make the case for all Bengali

Hindus who in her view were not “passive bystanders.” 17

Chatterji’s larger argument provides a convenient historical trajectory to this colonial representation and seeks to explain the religious demographic calculations behind the Partition as a process which reflected inherent divisions within Indian socio-political milieu. Partition thus was inevitable not only because Indian leaders such as Nehru, Patel and Jinnah forced the British hand, but also because of the intrinsic and age-old communal fault-lines. Not only do such arguments tend to deflect the role of British politics in India, but also provide no space for the examination of alternatives to the nationalism-communalism binary. Unfortunately, Chatterji is not alone in upholding the primacy of communalism in Bengali politics. , in his study of communal riots in the first half of the twentieth century, argues for a successful

16 Chatterji traces the proliferation of communalism in Bengal thus, “Nationalism was directed against and gave top priority to anti-British action. The communalism of the was directed against their fellow . History for the one was the struggle against British liberation from the despotism of Muslims. Its key political objective was to prevent this ‘despotism’ from returning when the British left India, and to deny that Muslims could be Bengalis, and by extension Indians.” Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268.

17 In an attempt to provide agency to the colonized, Chatterji argues, “ Bengalis were not passive bystanders in the partition of their province; nor were they victims of circumstances entirely out of their control, forced reluctantly to accept the division of their ‘motherland’. On the contrary, a large number of Hindus of Bengal, backed up by the provincial branches of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, campaigned intensively in 1947 for the partition of Bengal inside an Indian Union.” Ibid., 227.

8 synthesis between elite and popular communalism in the Bengal countryside that found culmination in the 1946 riots.18 Here too, is an argument for the uni-linear path of communalism, this time of Muslim communalism that makes Partition inevitable.

That provincial politics in Bengal saw an increasing presence of elite Hindu and Muslim communalism cannot be denied. As Sekhar Bandyopadhya contends, from the 1930s onwards

Hindu organizations began to mobilize lower caste groups, such as the in Bengal within the larger Hindu fold.19 The subsequent shifts in class and community relations were, in

Bandyopadhya’s view, crucial in garnering support for the partition. But Taj ul Hashmi reveals that the Muslim peasantry in Bengal organized along communitarian lines that also involved mobilization along class divisions.20 These factors do not necessarily indicate that public discourse and political rhetoric in the 1930s and 1940s assumed a Hindu or Muslim identity at the expense of anti-colonial nationalist agitation. Rather, nationalist leaders had strategically deployed both Hindu and Muslim religious symbols in their efforts to incorporate the masses since at least 1905. In this context, Sugata Bose argues “Anti-colonial nationalism of Hindus and

Muslims alike had always been influenced by their religiously informed cultural identities embroidered with an array of religious symbols and empowered by religion as faith.” 21

Elsewhere, Bose makes the critical distinction between communitarian struggles of non-elite social groups in which religion played an important organization role and the communal

18 Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1991).

19 Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity in : The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997).

20 Taj ul Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal 1920-1947 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992).

21 Sugata Bose, “Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on Historiography of Nationalism in Bengal” in Sekhar Bandyopadhya, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 288.

9 mobilizations within provincial politics informed by colonial constructions of politically representative religious groups.22

Religion as the raison d’etre of the politics of Partition becomes problematic when the focus shifts to the eastern part of Bengal. has argued that the East Bengal/East

Pakistan story gets subsumed within a broader schema of partition historiography that fails to appreciate that for some Muslim Bengalis, the Partition was a way to emerge from Hindu domination and experience cultural autonomy as a Muslim and a Bengali.23 However, such explanations lead to yet another kind of pre-histories which seeks to explain the emergence of

Bangladesh in 1971 as a repudiation of arguments in favor of Muslim or Hindu communalism.

Unfortunately, the narrative of Bangladeshi nationhood has not only erased the Partition of 1947 from public memory there, but also created a space within the historiography, which locates the birth of the Muslim Bengali ‘national self-consciousness’ from the first Partition of Bengal in

1905.24

This dissertation moves away from the national-communal binary and situates itself within the contingent decisions that ultimately informed the Partition decision. the members of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, in taking the political decision to divide the province depended largely on contingent and strategic reasons. Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that the campaign for and against partition involved small numbers of people and argues against any discursive

22 Sugata Bose, The New Cambridge , Peasant Labour and Colonial Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993) 142.

23 Anisuzzaman, , Reality, Identity (Dhaka: Dhaka University Press, 1993).

24 The erasure of the Partition of 1947 is stark in its omission within the three volumes of Sirajul ed. 1704-1971 (Dhaka: Asiatic Society of Bangladesh, 1997). The only essay within the first volume which deals partially with the Partition is by Ahmed Kamal, “East Bengal at .”

10 influence that public debates might have had on high politics.25 However, such public debates provided a crucial space within which people of Bengal, albeit an educated and statistically small group, articulated multiple visions of the nation. Religion provided a convenient basis and was one of several factors in the articulation of such demands. I argue that rather than communalism, we need to place the demands for and against Partition that animated public debates in early

1947 as evidence of a cognitive partitioning of the imagined community.

The debate on why Partition happened will be confined within a teleological trap and its history continued to be narrated as the story of victims and villains so long as the focus remains fixated at creating ‘pre-histories’ of partition. This dissertation argues that any analysis of the

Partition of Bengal needs to situate itself within what happened in its aftermath as well as the early events of 1947. The uncertainty that Partition immediately created, both with regard to nationality and territoriality, becomes comprehensible only when one moves away from high politics and the narrative of the inexorable trajectory towards division. Partition thus should be viewed as a process even though it remains genealogically embedded within a ‘moment of rupture’.26

More significantly, this dissertation counters the histories that assume the reflexive nationalisms of India and Pakistan as a foregone conclusion after 1947. By centering on the decades immediately after the Partition, this dissertation examines the various state engendered processes and their contestations by the different groups of citizens to argue against the ‘natural’ assumptions of contemporary South Asian geo-politics. In the succeeding years after the ‘paper’

Partition, India and Pakistan set in motion the complex development of actualizing the Partition.

25 Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 28.

26 Pandey, Remembering Partition, 1.

11 Critical within the regimen of post-Partition national order in India were the specific understandings of violence, victimhood that questioned the legitimacy of each state. Further, both India and East Pakistan implemented policies which identified and divided their citizens as majorities and minorities and which linked loyalty to the nation with domicile. Within these processes of state formation that a post-partition national order in India and East Pakistan took shape and began to operate within the partitioned provinces.

Normative Histories of Violence and Refugee Rehabilitation

Recently academic scholarship has shifted attention away from the examination of the politics of Partition to its immediate impact, from causality, to ‘lived experience’27 in order to render a human and gendered narrative of the Partition and its aftermath.28 Ethnographic studies focus on the period leading up to the Partition and its immediate repercussion on the experiences of the displaced and on the narratives of the horrific acts of , violence and murder both between and within communities in the Punjab. Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin have highlighted the gendered nature of Partition violence that targeted women as symbols of their community’s honor. Butalia and Das in their studies of Partition violence have shown the myriad ways in which the collective and individual memories of violence are mediated along caste class and gendered lines. The most important contribution of these writings

27 E. P. Thompson defines experience as “the mental and emotional response, whether of a individual, or of a group, to many interrelated events or to many repetitions of the same kind of events.” The Poverty of Theory or An Orrey of Errors (London: Merlin Press, 1995), 7.

28 Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, Mushirul Hasan ed. India’s Partition: Process, Strategy and Mobilization (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1993); , The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (Durham, NC: University Press, 2000); Veena Das, Mirrors of Violence: Communities, Riots and Survivors in South Asia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh, eds., Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Suvir Kaul, Partitions of Memory, The Afterlife of the Division of India (New Delhi; Permanent Black, 2001).

12 have been to draw attention to the disjuncture between national histories of the Partition and personal narratives of 1947 and to reveal the multiple ways in which the latter contest and subvert the former. Similarly, Gyanendra Pandey examines how communities and local traditions reconstituted themselves through the language of Partition violence that privileged a particular reconstruction of the past.29 The historiography thus marks a shift in emphasis from structural analysis of Partition violence to one that analyzes the modalities of memory and forgetting.

Yet this focus on violence as a template to recapture the Partition experience has intentionally or unintentionally created what I call ‘normative’ histories of the Partition. Such histories center on Punjab region and privilege the cataclysmic violence as the primary experience of the Partition. Although violence was integral to how the Partition affected people’s lives, it was not, as recent studies have revealed, the only experience. 30 Moreover, Partition has now become a template to test the relationships among nationalism, communalism and the contemporary saffronization of Indian politics31 and/or where the intersections of gender, citizenship and nation are tested.32

29 Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition.

30 In its examination of the Partition experience recent scholarship has broadened its enquiry to include the processes which went into the making of post 1947 nation states. For example see Lucy Chester, Drawing the Indo Pakistani Boundary During the 1947 Partition of South Asia (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Yale University, 2002), Vazira , Divided Families and the Making of Nationhood in India and Pakistan, 1947-65 (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University, 2003).

31Gyanendra Pandey, The Construction of Communalism in Colonial (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990); Veena Das, Critical Events: An Anthropological Perspective on Contemporary India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1995); Tapan Basu et al, Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1993).

32 Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993); K. Jayawardena and M. de Alwis eds., Embodied Violence: Communalising Women’s Sexuality in South Asia (London: Zed Books, 1996).

13 What is striking within these ‘normative’ histories is the perceptible silence of any voices from the east, from East Bengal/East Pakistan/Bangladesh.33 The Bengal Partition with its low scale, chronic violence fits awkwardly within this project to represent and produce a specific sub-continental Partition experience. This is not to suggest that the Partition of Bengal has not received any attention within academic scholarship. Rather, such attention has been exhaustibly focused on the migration and rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan into India. The movement of refugees became the center of this Partition historiography through sociological explorations of their caste and class structures34, and attempts to connect the rise of the Left in

West Bengal in the 1970s to the preceding migration and rehabilitation.35 Studies of refugee rehabilitation have focused on both spatial development of the Calcutta metropolitan region36 as well as the development of official policies, or the lack thereof, in the face of continuing migration in the succeeding decades after 1947.37 The focus on refugee rehabilitation has expanded to incorporate the many ways in which refugees initiated, contested and negotiated their rights of relief with authorities who conceptualized rehabilitation as a form of charity.38

33 Shelley Feldman, “ Feminist Interruptions: The Silence of East Bengal in the Story of Partition,” Interventions 1, no. 2 (1999): 167-182.

34 Kanti B. Pakrashi, The Uprooted: A Sociological Study of the Refugees of West Bengal (Calcutta, 1971).

35 Prafulla Chakrabarty, The Marginal Men, The Refugees and the Left Political Syndrome in West Bengal (Calcutta: Lumiere, 1990).

36 Asok , “ Parting of Ways: Partition and After in Bengal” Economic and Political Weekly (3 November, 1990): 2441-2446; Pranati Chaudhuri, Refugees in West Bengal: A Study of the Growth and Distribution of Refugee Settlements with the CMD, Occasional Paper No. 55 (Calcutta: Centre for Studies in Social Sciences, March 1983), Jhuma Sanyal, Making of a New Space, Refugees in West Bengal (Kolkata: Ratna Prakashan, 2003).

37 Pradip K. Bose, Refugees in West Bengal, Institutional Practices and Contested Identities (Calcutta: Calcutta Research Group, 2000).

38 Joya Chatterji, “ Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947-50” in Kaul ed., Partitions of Memory, 74-110; Gyanesh Kudaisya, “The Demographic Upheaval of Partition: Refugees and Agricultural Resettlement in India,” South Asia, Vol. XVIII, Special Issue (1995): 73-94; Also see an excellent examination of refugee politics in West Bengal by Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children, and the Politics of Rehabilitation (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University, 1992).

14 Most importantly, the scholarship on refugee rehabilitation more recently has focused on the modalities of reconstitution of the refugee self within the new nation states.39 These works highlight the multiple instances of refugee agency and complicate our understanding of refugees simply as ‘passive’ or ‘burdens’ of the state.

Similar to the focus on violence in the Punjab Partition, the focus on refugee rehabilitation as a template to examine what happened in the Bengal Partition gives rise to problematic essentialisms. Punjab remains the seat of definitive Partition violence even though the riots of 1946 in Bengal and created the cognitive space for demands for Partition. Still, the ‘unending trail’ of refugees has become metonymic to the experience of the Bengal Partition.

More importantly, I suggest such normative histories have uncomfortable resonances with contemporary official views on the Partitions. That the Indian state, after 1947, had differential policies for the rehabilitation of Punjabi and Bengali refugees is well documented.40

Recently, Sarbani Sen has argued that the responses of the Indian government towards the rehabilitation of East Bengali Hindu refugees were ad hoc due to the inability of that government to accept the migration as a permanent phenomena.’41 However, the speedy and successful response in the West, she argues, indicated an implicit acceptance of an exchange of population.

Similar arguments on policies of the Indian state remain limited in their inability to answer the crucial question of why such policies operated differently. This dissertation examines the reasons for this differential access to relief and rehabilitation that stemmed from the critical

39 Meghna GuhaThakurta, “Understanding the Bengal Partition Through Reconstructing Family Histories: A Case Study.” The Journal of Social Studies, 76 (April 1997): 56-65; Manas Ray, “Growing Up Refugee,” History Workshop Journal, 53, 1 (Spring 2002): 148-179.

40 Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta eds., The Trauma and the Triumph, Gender and Partition in Eastern India (Kolkata: Stree, 2003); Pradip K. Bose, Refugees in West Bengal.

41 Sarbani Sen, “The Legal Regime for Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1946-1958,” in Ibid., 57.

15 understanding of violence as cataclysmic and physical and the attempt to define refugees as victims of such violence. Refugee rehabilitation policies of the Indian state was influenced by its understanding of Partition violence which hierarchized the Punjab experience over and above the continuous, small-scale chronic violence in Bengal. The Indian state thus considered the migration of Bengali refugees as unwarranted and consequently they were illegitimate candidates for rehabilitation.

The scholarship on refugee rehabilitation itself remains problematic as it engages with the category of the ‘refugee’ as an undifferentiated mass whose experiences of migration and resettlement are homogenized. Further, these examinations assume that the Bengal Partition generated a singular and automatic ‘refugee’ identity which was dissociated from the minority question that engulfed public and political debates on citizenship after 1947. The reconstitution of identities depended on a variety of factors, some of which were created in collusion with official policies of the new nation states.42

Gautam Ghosh has asserted that religion played a crucial role in the re-structuring refugee identities in West Bengal.43 Religion also plays a role in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s analysis of the specific construction of the memories of Hindu Bengali refugees. These recollections,

Chakrabarty argues, defined the pre-Partition imaginary in Bengal as specifically Hindu where the Muslim Bengali figured as a secondary character.44 This assumed cognitive partitioning of the refugee mind played a critical role in negotiations with and alienation towards their new

42 Md. Mahbubar Rahman and Willem Van Schendel, “‘I am Not a Refugee’: Rethinking Partition Migration,’ Modern Asian Studies, 37, 3 (2003): 551-84.

43 Gautam Ghosh, “‘God is a Refugee’: Nationalism, Morality and History in the 1947 Partition of India,” Social Analysis, 42, 1 (1998): 33-62.

44 Dipesh Chakrabarty, “Remembered Villages: Representation of Hindu-Bengali Memories in the Aftermath of the Partition,” in D A Low and Howard Brasted eds. Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998), 133-152.

16 circumstances. Both Ghosh’s and Chakrabarty’s emphases on religion within the refugee imaginary focus on a specific class of refugees, who were educated and formed the urban and rural elite in East Pakistan and becomes problematic when confronted with the different caste and class structure of the later migration.

The Nation’s Borderlands

The establishment of international borders was the sine qua non of the Partition enterprise.

However the study of border and its impact ironically remains liminal to Partition historiography that concentrates on processes leading up to the establishment of the Boundary Commission and within studies of post-Independent India and Pakistan that take the border as immanent and peripheral to the creation of national identities.

The Bengal border was critical in creating a central space where the relationships between state and citizenship, between nation and territory, were and are constantly being tested and negotiated. Recent studies have focused on the uncertainty and confusion that were fundamental to the establishment of the line of division. The impossible task of determining a border to accommodate religious demography was delegated to Cyril Radcliffe, a British civil servant with little knowledge of the , who chaired the five member Boundary

Commission. Gyanesh Kudaisya and Tai Yong Tan examine the varied issues that confronted the

Commission and reveal how it was hampered by unclear and contradictory terms of reference. 45

The conflicting claims of the leading political parties and a restricted schedule of six weeks made their task more difficult. Lucy Chester argues that at the end of imperial rule in India the main object of the British Government was to enable a smooth and quick transition of political power

45 Tai Yong Tan and Gyanesh Kudaisya, “The Making of South Asian Borders,” in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, 78-100.

17 to the Indian and Pakistani leaders. Thus the accuracy of colonial maps or the basic realities of the ultimate border mattered less than the façade that the Boundary Commission had deliberated and resolved issues along democratic principles.46 The process of creating the border embodied both the desire of an honorable withdrawal on the part of the British and the first steps among

Indian and Pakistani leaders to map the contours of their respective nations. Joya Chatterji contends that “party-political, factional and personal ambitions” of the key players influenced the decisions on the final award. 47 The Boundary Awards, published two days after August 15,

1947, did not satisfy anyone and unsettled the regional societies of Punjab and Bengal. The demarcation and control of the border proved to be equally problematic as ecological shifts in rivers created a moving boundary and movement of border dwellers time and again contested the tested the irrevocability of political boundaries.

Here, at the periphery of the jurisdictional and territorial limits of nation states that people experienced the actuality of Partition as they came to realize what it meant to be citizens of different nation states. The ‘document’ regimen of the Permits, Passports, Visas and Refugee

Slips operated at the border. In the French and American context, John Torpey has identified the evolution of the Passport as a way of controlling people that was central to the discourse of citizenship.48 These documents claimed a monopoly of controlling and placing border-crossers into different categories as a way of asserting the boundaries of the sovereign nation. In the case of the Bengal border, conditions differed slightly. There was no ‘natural’ succession of laws to control the border once the line had been drawn on the map. In contrast to the western boundary,

46Chester, Drawing the Indo Pakistani Boundary, 41.

47 Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier: The and Bengal’s Border Landscape, 1947-52,” Modern Asian Studies, 33,1 (1999): 213, 185-242.

48 John C. Torpey, The Invention of the Passport, Surveillance, Citizenship and the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).

18 Indian authorities at the center in New Delhi and Calcutta did not view an "open" border as a threat to India’s security. The Bengal border thus evolved primarily as an economic frontier immediately after 1947 and remained legally open to people till 1952. The chronic but continuous migration of East Bengali Hindu refugees who demanded the ‘right’ to rehabilitation from India led the Indian government to its piecemeal attempts to close the border in the east.

The need to control the ‘unending trail’ ensured that by the mid-1950s the border assumed territorial sanctity in official discourse and action. This dissertation argues that the processes of delineating the political and territorial jurisdiction of the nation-state enabled the emergence of national identity as the principal axis of state control over mobility and citizenship.

Thus it was also at the border that the ‘imagined political community’ had to be reconstituted to fit the needs of new nation states. Identities at the periphery had to simultaneously negotiate the emergence of the South Asian region as a ‘unified’ entity49 as well as the reflexive nationalisms that critically depended on each other for self-definition. Thongchai

Winichakul has identified, in the case of pre-colonial Siam, the origins of nation or as he terms it the ‘geo-body’ as a construct which was manifested in the territoriality of the nation as well as the collective understanding of the ‘self’ of the inhabitants of the nation.50 Such a formulation occurred by the meeting of autochthonous spatial discourse with the modern technological representation, the map. The historiography on colonial cartography has established that maps were essential tools of knowledge and control, defining not only the topography but also the

49 Ranabir Samaddar, “ The History that Partition Creates,” in his edited Reflections on Partition in the East (Calcutta: Vikas, 1997): 10-11.

50 Thongchai Winichakul, Siam Mapped: A History of the Geo-Body of a Nation (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994): 16-18.

19 conceptual nation.51 Ironically, maps within post-1947 South Asia play a crucial role by their absence. Since their inception, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have placed severe restrictions on the maps, even on some pre-1947 survey maps under claims of national security. Such cartographic anxieties whose underlying fear is that of national disintegration are clearly a legacy of the Boundary Commission. In the case of the Bengal border, there was no clear co-relation between territory and national identity. Such identities were produced within the space created by the India and Pakistan’s attempts to control their mutual border on the east, and the constant repudiation of its impenetrability by citizens of both countries.

The porosity of the border has led M. Baud and W. Van Schendel to conceptually shift the study of the border to the borderland as the unit of analysis. They argue that “there has always been an enormous gap between the rhetoric of border maintenance and daily life in the borderlands.”52 An examination of borderlands as a site of interaction and negotiation between people from both sides serves as an important corrective to the unchanging and linear representation of the border on maps. Further, the borderland defined itself as a vibrant site of economic activity even as the new nation states endeavored to criminalize such activities. The border simultaneously evolved as a barrier to work and a site of new employment for state appointed officials, militias and armed forces to guard the new national frontiers. 53

51 Focusing on the British cartographic enterprise in early nineteenth century India, Mathew Edney argues that the colonialists sought to describe an imperial conception of British India. “British India which was otherwise a quite arbitrary entity was naturalized by the British to be a constant timeless ‘natural’ uniform geographical entity, political nation and cultural state.” Mapping an Empire: The Geographical Construction of British India 1765-1843 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1997): 334.

52 Michiel Baud and Willem Van Schendel, “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands,” Journal of World History, 8, 2 (1997): 220.

53 See Willem Van Schendel, “Working through Partition: Making a Living in the Bengal Borderlands,” International Review of Social History, 46 (December 2001): 393-421 and chapter 3 for details.

20 Creating Trans-territorial citizens

No easy coincidence between citizenship, religious identity and the territorial limits of the nation existed. The demand for a Muslim homeland that had pervaded the countdown to

Partition and its tangible success embedded within the establishment of Pakistan meant that there was an implicit understanding that Muslims would ‘naturally’ identify with Pakistan while non-

Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians and others, would automatically become part of India.

Consequently, minority Hindus and Muslims who continued their domicile in Pakistan and India after 1947 became what Van Schendel defines as ‘proxy citizens.’54 Minority Hindus in East

Pakistan, though legally citizens of the Pakistan state, were categorized as putative citizens of the

Indian state which continued to express concern over their rights and security through agreements and the establishment of institutions such Minority Boards. Similarly, newspaper in

East Pakistan consistently highlighted the plight of the Muslims in India. Such trans-territorial concerns were integral to the project of nation building even as they belied the limits of distinct nationhood and contradicted the project of secular identities.

For each newly independent state, the security of the minorities within India and East

Pakistan became the acid test of legitimate nationhood. Minority migration became central to the game of numerical one-upmanship between India and Pakistan as each accused the other of creating conditions that stimulated the protracted migration on the eastern border. Both countries evolved processes which sought to quantify the human movement across their mutual border. At one level the direction and magnitude of the migration indicated the successes and failures of

India and East Pakistan to establish their national order. In this game, India claimed a moral edge as the Census of 1951 recorded more Hindus migrated from East Pakistan than did of Muslim

54 Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia: The Making of the India-Bangladesh Enclaves,” Journal of Asian Studies, 61, 1 (February 2002): 127, 115-147.

21 migrants who departed for East Pakistan. As India blamed East Pakistan of not being able to guarantee minority rights, the latter countered by accusing India of creating ‘pull factors’ for the

East Pakistan Hindus which went counter to its proclaimed secular identity. Implicit within such accusations was the question of legitimacy predicated on each state’s ability to guarantee equal citizenship rights to their respective minorities.

For the East Pakistani authorities, migration of its minorities became a moot issue reflecting an intricate weave of loyalty and territory that defined citizenship not by birth but by domicile. Thus any movement across the border was interpreted as inherently disloyal, destabilizing the new state and siphoning its minimal resources. The very real predicament of establishing the infrastructure for the new East Pakistani state was a potent factor within this equation. In 1948, the East Pakistan state legislated the Evacuee Property Act to assure its minorities that authorities would guard their property and hand it back to them if they returned from India. But by the Indo-Pakistan war of 1965, the East Pakistan government changed this legislation, pleading wartime exigencies into the Enemy Property Act. As the name suggests, this law usurped the very property that it had in the earlier decade claimed to protect. The historical trajectory of this metamorphosis highlights the critical connections between state processes and minority dislocation in post-Partition Bengal.

The chronic and prolonged nature of the migration from the east illustrates that even as minorities in West Bengal and East Pakistan developed into trans-territorial citizens in the eyes of each state, such identities remained negotiable at the individual level. Hindu and Muslim minorities identified with the state of their co-religionists only under extreme circumstances when they perceived that their territorial nation could not guarantee their citizenship rights in the face of threats from extra-state actors. Thus for East Pakistani Hindus migration was not always

22 predicated on permanent uprooting but on the belief that they would be able to retain their kinship and social ties with their ancestral homes. Thus they were also following the traditional pattern of urban rural migration in the region during colonial times. In the past there had been the possibility of return. However, the requirements of post-partition states to define their boundaries and identify their loyal citizens made it almost impossible for the continuance of such ties.

Similarly, within the communally charged ’s relations with the princely states of and in 1947-48, the issue of loyalty became controversial for the minority Muslims of West Bengal. As members of a community, which had been closely connected with demand for Pakistan, they easily became the usual suspects of anti- state activities.

The Bengal Partition generated a unique form of trans-territoriality where national citizenship was defined by domicile, but religious community defined proxy citizenship. This duality reinforced their marginality as loyal citizens of their territorial nation. Rather than having a ‘natural attraction’ to join their majority brethren on the other side, minorities became casualties of nation building.55

Chapter Organization

In my second chapter, I examine popular and political rhetoric on the eve of

Partition to identify the multiple ideas of nationhood based on regional and socio-cultural ties that continued to exist and negotiate for recognition within increasingly communalized spaces. In early 1947 when the political and constitutional impasse between Indian leaders and British officials made partitioning of India and of Bengal and Punjab a fait accompli, Bengalis advanced

55 See Chapter 4 for an analysis of the official rhetoric on the continuing migration.

23 their rationales for and against the Partition. Their demands reflect attempts to negotiate territory within the imagined political community and not religious .

The third chapter explores the cartographic problems that faced the Indian and Pakistani officials in their attempts to create and define an international border in the east. The superficial and sometimes arbitrary manner in which policy makers and political bodies carried out the process stands out in contrast to the complexity and the fallibility of the process of nation building. Practical realities of border life constantly questioned the sanctity of such territorial demarcations. Although the border attempted to separate neighbors and create new citizens, the continuation of sporadic and small-scale communal violence, both physical and psychological, victimized minorities who continued to live in their natal homes.

The fourth chapter delineates the creation of a post-Partition national order in which minorities of each state played a crucial role. As guarantors of legitimacy of nationhood, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in India also became ‘proxy’ citizens. However, citizenship within their territorial nation remained contested. Minorities, who were also alternately evacuees and refugees, became dislocated even as India and East Pakistan set into motion policies to fix their physical location.

Chapter five analyzes the specific nature of violence as represented and mediated through media reports and minority narratives that prompted many Hindu minorities in East Pakistan to cross the border. Along with incidents of chronic small-scale violence, which targeted them in particular, such images of violence served as templates upon which minorities constructed narratives of and victimhood to justify their displacement and consequent rights to rehabilitation as refugees. Minority Hindus and Muslims in divided Bengal were thus enmeshed

24 in a Partition engendered vicious cycle within which they had to constantly juggle multiple identities.

The sixth chapter focuses on the process of continued and chronic migration that created a ‘refugee problem’ for India. Embedded within the Indian state’s official discourse of refugee relief and rehabilitation was a specific construction of the Bengali refugees as ineffectual migrants. Such assessments were based on the specific paradigm of what constituted Partition violence and victimhood in which Punjab violence was the prototype. Denying violence served the critical purpose of limiting the state’s obligation towards refugees from the east and masks its failure to tackle the rehabilitation process.

25 Chapter 2

Fractured Nations: The Demand For Partition

On 23 April 1947, the , a widely read nationalist newspaper published from Calcutta, featured the results of a Gallup poll with regard to the

Partition of Bengal. In reply to the Patrika’s question “Do you want a separate homeland for

Bengal Hindus?” an overwhelming 98.3% Bengalis voted in favor, and 0.6% voted against the division of the province.1 The newspaper reported that of the 99.6% Hindus and 0.4% Muslims who had replied to the poll, most had voted in favor of the Partition. The Patrika claimed the results of the opinion poll were evidence of the people’s verdict favoring the partitioning of the province.

This chapter focuses on the non-political public discourse on the possibilities of independence and Partition in the months leading up to August 15, 1947. In examining the different ways in which the educated middle classes voiced their ideas about the future of their province and their country, it becomes clear that the public sphere in Bengal continue to accommodate and provide space for alternatives to Partition that need not be read only in terms of communal articulations. Although the growing popularity of the Partition movement to divide

Bengal may have been engendered due to political mobilization of communal parties such as the

Hindu Mahasabha and facilitated by the provincial League Ministry,2 evidence of ideas that

1 Amrita Bazar Patrika (henceforth, ABP), 23 April 1947, 1, 5. The newspaper published its intentions of conducting a Gallup Poll to ascertain “ as far as possible, public opinion on the question of proposed partition of Bengal for the creation of a separate homeland for Bengal Hindus” on March 23 1947. The polls closed on 15 April 1947, and the results were published on 23 April. To maintain the credibility of the poll, the paper also published comments in support from Surendra Mohan Ghosh, the president of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee, and the reputed Calcutta based charted accountant company of Messrs. and Mitra.

2 Bidyut Chakrabarty argues that the Bengal ministry was “crucial in segregating the two principal communities into almost watertight compartments.” Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and , 1932-1947, Contour of Freedom (London: Routledge, 2004), 115.

26 provided different solutions exists. These points of view, published in leading newspapers and expressed in personal letters addressed to political leaders, reflect multiple concerns about the future of the Indian nation, identity and political citizenship. Although couched within demands for or against Partition, they provide clear proof that the Partition story cannot be so easily read as a projection of Hindu and Muslim communalism.

The results of the opinion poll of the Amrita Bazar Patrika, at one level, indicated the complete reversal of some sections of the Bengali Hindu public opinion. Indeed, some historians such as Joya Chatterji have argued that the public demands for Partition and a separate

“homeland for Bengali Hindus” on eve of Partition reflected the end result of a decisive shift

‘from nationalism to communalism’ that had marked Bengal politics and identity from the

1930s.3 In fact Chatterji attributes a central role to Bengali Hindus, mainly bhadralok4, in spearheading the campaign that led to the fateful division of the province in 1947.5 This argument has several problems, the least of which is that of a teleological trap which seeks to explain an event by using that very event as a starting point. In this argument, the contingent

3 Chatterji traces the proliferation of communalism in Bengal thus, “Nationalism was directed against imperialism and gave top priority to anti-British action. The communalism of the bhadralok was directed against their fellow Bengalis. History for the one was the struggle against British liberation from the despotism of Muslims. Its key political objective was to prevent this ‘despotism’ from returning when the British left India, and to deny that Muslims could be Bengalis, and by extension Indians.” Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932-1947 (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 268.

4 Recent historiography on the bhadralok has identified the bhadralok as a heterogeneous social group. Tithi Bhattacharya argues that “in their own perception the bhadralok situated themselves as a "middle class" (madhyasreni, madhyabftta), below the aristocracy (dhanilok or abhijat) and above the "lesser folk" engaged in manual labour and generally separate from the lower or Muslims. What distinguished them from both was education of a particular kind, so much so that in commonsensical terms, the pronouncements about education ultimately became the sole criterion for defining the bhadralok.” For details see Tithi Bhattacharya, “In the Name of Culture,” South Asia Research, 21, 2 (2001): 163.

5 Chatterji, in an attempt to provide agency to the colonized argues, “ Bengalis were not passive bystanders in the partition of their province; nor were they victims of circumstances entirely out of their control, forced reluctantly to accept the division of their ‘motherland’. On the contrary, a large number of Hindus of Bengal, backed up by the provincial branches of the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha, campaigned intensively in 1947 for the partition of Bengal inside an Indian Union.” Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 227.

27 decision to Partition India, which really took shape in the last few months before Independence becomes an event, engendered through deliberate communal processes that can then be traced back to periods before British rule in India.6 British understanding of Indian society as composed of distinct and antagonistic religious communities continued to manifest in the reasons they put forward in support of partitioning India. Lord Mountbatten, -General of India from March 1947, along with other British officials stationed in India, strongly believed and projected the idea that the partition of the country into Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan was the only way that the contemporary communal tensions could be resolved. The attendant loss of life that might accompany such an event was accepted as an inevitable compensation for the greater cause of granting India and Pakistan new national identities.

Chatterji’s larger argument provides a convenient historical trajectory to this colonial representation and seeks to explain the religious demographic calculations behind the Partition as a process that reflected inherent divisions within Indian socio-political milieu. Partition thus was inevitable not only because Indian leaders such as Nehru, Patel and Jinnah forced the British hand, but also because of the intrinsic and age-old communal fault-lines. Not only do such lines of argument tend to deflect the role of British politics in India, but also provide no space for the examination of alternatives to the nationalism-communalism binary.

That provincial politics in Bengal saw an increasing presence of Hindu communalism and a growing paranoia amongst sections of the Bengali Hindu bhadralok towards ‘Muslim tyranny’ cannot be denied. However, these factors do not necessarily indicate that public discourse and political rhetoric in the 1930s and 1940s assumed a ‘Hindu identity’ at the expense of anti-

6 C.A. Bayly, “ The Pre-history of ‘Communalism?’ Religious Conflict in India, 1700-1860”, in CA Bayly, Origins of Nationality in South Asia: and Ethical Government in the Making of Modern India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2005), 210-237.

28 colonial nationalist agitation. Rather, nationalist leaders had strategically deployed both Hindu and Muslim religious symbols in their efforts to incorporate the masses since at least 1905.7

The campaign for and against partition in the early months of 1947 has to be framed within the two key events that acutely influenced political demands. First, the arrival of the three- member delegation of British Cabinet Ministers, comprising Lord Pethwick-Lawrence, Sir

Stafford Cripps and Mr. A. V. Alexander, in March 1946 to conduct negotiations with the Indian political parties on the issue of transfer of power raised hopes of an independent India. The initial talks between the Cabinet Mission and Indian leaders such as Nehru, Maulana Abul

Kalam Azad representing All India National Congress (henceforth AICC) interests and Jinnah representing League interests could not resolve the central issue of whether India would remain united or be partitioned to accommodate the demand for a constitutionally independent

Pakistan.8

The announcement of the Cabinet Mission Plan in December 1946 that the British intended to transfer power to either a united or a divided India galvanized public politics in

Bengal. With independence at last in sight, Bengalis believed that processes that had led to this

7 In this context, Sugata Bose has argued, “ Anti-colonial nationalism of Hindus and Muslims alike had always been influenced by their religiously informed cultural identities embroidered with an array of religious symbols and empowered by religion as faith.” Sugata Bose, “Between Monolith and Fragment: A Note on Historiography of Nationalism in Bengal” in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, Essays in Historiography (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 288.

8Abul Azad assisted by Nehru and Patel was the Congress representative and Jinnah represented the Muslim League. The Congress was against Partition at this juncture and advocated cultural, economic and regional autonomy of various regions. The failed to resolve the League Congress differences and the Cabinet mission in their May 16 1946 statement offered a three-tier constitutional solution to the problem. On the top would be the Union of India constituted by all regions under British India and Indian states, responsible for foreign affairs, defense and communications. The bottom tier would comprise provinces and states vested with all residuary powers. The intermediate tier would include ‘groups’ formed by provinces to deal with certain common subjects. The question about what and how the ‘grouping’ of the states would be constituted remained unresolved and the Jinnah gave the call for ‘Direct Action’ to garner support for a constitutionally independent Pakistan. For details on the Cabinet Mission Plan and the responses of the leaders of the Congress and Muslim League Working Committee, see Nicholas Mansergh ed., The Transfer of Power 1942-7 Vol. VII (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office), 1977.

29 decision now needed the final push for success in the form of their decision for and against

Partition. Public and political debates were informed mainly by assumptions that the juggernaut of division was already on the roll, that under the circumstances the only recourse was in determining and bargaining for specific sectional interests and trying to ensure a secure political future within India or Pakistan.9 The decision of the Congress high command to accept the possibility of partitioning Punjab in March 1947 forcefully triggered Hindu public opinion within

Bengal to demand a partition so that the Hindu minority would have a place outside the proposed

Pakistan whose territorial, legal and constitutional coordinates remained unclear. It is within this immediate political frame that the campaign for and against the Partition of Bengal needs to be placed.

Second, as the negotiations between Indian leaders and the Cabinet Mission consistently ended in constitutional impasse, Jinnah decided to accelerate public support for a constitutionally independent Pakistan and called for ‘Direct Action’ from all Muslim League supporters. It was not clear what and how this ‘Direct action’ was to manifest itself in different parts of India. On

August 16, 1946, a massive communal riot broke out in Calcutta. The Bengal provincial administration remained deliberately passive while Hindu and Muslim extremist groups wreaked havoc on each other and on citizens. The carnage lasted for three days and resulted in the death of approximately five thousand people.10 Most members of the opposition in the

9 Partha Chatterjee points out that the campaign for and against partition involved small numbers of people, and the political decision to partition the province taken by the members of the Bengal legislative assembly depended largely on contingent and strategic reasons. He thus argues against any discursive influence that public debates might have had on high politics. Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal” in The Present History of West Bengal: Essays in Political Criticism (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), 28.

10While most scholars agree that at the individual level, the Bengal premier H S Suhrawardy was culpable of making irresponsible communal statements before the riots and was grossly negligent in his efforts to quell the rioters, historians differ in their emphasis on the causes of the riot. Haroun Or Rashid argues that the failure of a Congress League coalition after the 1946 elections prepared the ground for increasing communal hostility. Harun Or Rashid, The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League and Muslim Politics, 1906- 1947 (Dhaka: Dhaka

30 Bengal Legislative Assembly couched their grievances against the Muslim League government within accusations of mismanagement of the riot situation and a deliberate inability to protect minority Hindus. Some of their rhetoric against the Bengal government did take on communal tones, especially given the fact that the League ministry was almost entirely composed of

Muslims, and the opposition was Hindu. The Calcutta killings triggered off riots in Noakhali in eastern Bengal and Bihar in the succeeding months. The experience of the riots was crucial in polarizing communities in terms of communalizing space and identities. As neighborhoods and localities in Calcutta and the Bengal countryside grew communally inclusive and further apart from each other, identifying themselves as the Hindu para (neighborhood) or the Mussalman para (Muslim neighborhood), the prospect of partitioning the province began to appear to many as the only solution.

In the chaotic conditions of 1946-47, the political future of Bengalis appeared uncertain and out of their hands. Although for some middle class Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, religious identity circumscribed group and national identity, for many others the underpinnings of the imagined community continued to be expressed within territorial and linguistic concerns.

It should be emphasized that public opinion during 1946-47 was divided on the question of partitioning the province. Apart from overt communal justifications, the demands to Partition were justified on the basis of continued existence within the Indian union. These expressions, articulated within the demands for and against Partition, addressed the central issue of , the existence of multiple identities within the larger national community.

University Press, 1987), 261. Joya Chatterji points out that since the 1930s and 1940s, Bengali Hindu youths had been recipients of pseudo military training from organizations like the Bharat Sevasaram Sangha, a volunteer corp., associated with the Hindu Mahasabha, and the proliferation of neighborhood physical training centers in Calcutta ensured that the Hindus were prepared when the riots broke out. Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 232-36. Suranjan Das focuses on the conjunction between elite and popular communalism which ultimately manifested itself through the Calcutta riots of 1946. Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 1905-1947 (Delhi, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 160-206.

31 Moreover, some sections of the Bengali public who were opposed to the idea of Partition on different grounds and advocated the establishment of a that would have a separate constitutional existence, outside of the proposed India and Pakistan.11 But, when Sarat

Bose and H. S. Suhrawardy formally launched the United Bengal Plan in April 1947, it found few takers. The reasons for the early demise of this plan which sought to incorporate and construct a Bengali nation based on socialist ideals lies in the fact that this proposal for a sovereign Bengal did not provide realistic measures to end the current communalized political impasse. Many Bengali Hindus feared that United Bengal with its Muslim majority population could and would at a later date be persuaded to join Pakistan.

After the riots of 1946, elements of the Bengali Hindu middle class became concerned about their political future in a Muslim majority province. The establishment of the Bengal

Partition League in December 1946 marked the increased effort on the part of the Bengal provincial Hindu Mahasabha to align public support for the division. In the next few months, the

Congress high command and the Bengal provincial Congress leaders openly began to support

Partition for reasons of their own. However, in the public realm, demands and appeals for

Partition, even as they borrowed the contemporary tools of religious demographic identification, did not express themselves as demands for a nation based on religion or even a Hindu nation. A majority of the Bengali Hindus and some non-League Muslims demanded Partition to claim as much territory as possible for India once it became clear that Pakistan was a distinct possibility.

The growing insecurity and increased compartmentalization of physical territories and communal identities generated and provided the background in which people increasingly identified with their locality as a microcosm of the nation or , and traditions as defining their

11 For details on the United Bengal Plan, see Bidyut Chakrabarty, “The 1947 United Bengal Movement: A Thesis without Synthesis,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review. XXX, no. 4 (October 1993): 467.

32 cultural and historical roots. In the months leading up to the Partition, incorporation of these localities within the desh or the nation involved assertions based social, cultural and economic justifications. It is my argument that rather than religious validation, the demands for and against

Partition incorporated within themselves contestations and re-negotiations of spatial identities in their attempt to answer the question of ‘belonging’ and the base for membership within the imagined national community.

Multiple Meanings of the Nation

In Bengal, by the middle of 1940s, the imagined ‘national’ community had become fractured because of long and short-term changes in Bengal’s political and social environment. In the early twentieth century the nationalist movement broke out of its confines within Bengal and Bengali leaders and spread to other parts of India. During the 1920s and 1930s mass mobilization became a key instrument of nationalist struggle against colonial rule and leadership shifted from Bengali bhadralok Congressmen to leaders from other parts of India such as Mahatma Gandhi and

Jawaharlal Nehru. British administrative policies, especially implementation of separate electorates in 1909 and the of 1932 that had reserved seats for the minority

Muslim population, changed the equations within Bengal politics. Under the earlier arrangements of Dyarchy in 1919, the Hindus had had a numerical advantage of 46 seats in the

Council to the 39 seats reserved for the Muslims. In 1932, by the new regulations of the

Communal Award, 119 provincial assembly seats in Bengal were reserved for Muslims and 80 seats for Hindus, rendering the latter a political minority. The Poona Pact also concluded in 1932

33 assured 30 seats to the Depressed Classes within the 80 reserved for General Hindu constituencies. 12

Structural conditions within Bengal society also made it easy for parties to unite Muslims under the banner of Islam against their Hindu landlords and oppressors. Marxist scholars have for long argued that the inability of the provincial Congress leaders to resolve the tension in agrarian class relations ensured that such tension express itself in terms of religious communal conflict.13 To make matters worse, the All India Congress failed to capitalize on their success in the provincial elections of 1937 as they refused to join a coalition with the Krishak Praja Party

(KPP) which had also won substantial number of seats. This oversight led to the formation of a led by KPP and the Muslim League under Fazlul Haq. Muslim self- representation in Bengal came to the fore in this period as the succeeding decade saw a series of coalition with the Muslim League in a dominant position. The new politics of coalition opened up possibilities of inter-communal government and the potential for united political negotiations in the future.14

Although ideological impasses still existed, political leaders from both communities in

Bengal believed that the solution of the current communal problems lay within the province.

12 Bidyut Chakrabarty, Contours of Freedom, 60, 66.

13 Given that most of the Congress leaders hailed from the landed Hindu elite in Bengal and the peasantry mainly comprised of Muslims, Marxian scholars tend to explain the Partition as a breakdown of Hindu Muslim unity due to the inability of the provincial leaders to resolve this class tension. Further, this division, they argue, enabled the British to manipulate the various Indian political organizations on the issue of Partition in Bengal. See Badruddin Umar, Preface to Banga Bhanga o Sampradiyik Rajniti (Bengal Partition and Communal Politics) (Calcutta: Chirayat Prakasan, 1987), 3.

14 In 1941, Bengal government comprised a coalition of sections of the Congress, KPP and the Hindu Mahasabha. With the war from 1939, the Congress High Command resigned from office in protest and the provincial Congress in Bengal did the same. Throughout the war, the Bengal Provincial League continued to remain in office although they had been ordered to resign by the All India Muslim League. Mookerjee, the key leaders of the Hindu Mahasabha by this time, did join the bandwagon for a short while in 1943 but this coalition soon broke down in the face of irreconcilable differences.

34 Among the Bengali Muslim intelligentsia, such as and Wajid Ali questioned and disagreed with the All India Muslim League’s foregrounding of religious commonality among all Muslims in the subcontinent. Karim noted that “Muslims belong to the same nation as do Hindus, Christians, Parsees, or Buddhists in India,” and that “there is no nation in India called Hindu, nor one called Muslim, but we have religions here of these names.”15

Others within the political leadership of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League like

(Burdwan), Fazlur Rahman (Dacca) and Mohammad Ali (Bogra) challenged Jinnah’s two-nation theory. They argued that the regional and cultural characteristics of the constituted a nationality distinct and separate from the Muslims of the north and northwest

India.16

In Bengalees of Tomorrow, S. Wajid Ali, a prominent Bengali litterateur, questioned whether Islam could provide the basis of nationality. He advocated that Bengali Muslims could simultaneously be both Bengalis and Muslims. There was no “inherent hostility between Islam and patriotism and that territorial patriotism” was compliant with the ideals of Islam.17 Wajid Ali claimed that in different parts of the subcontinent, Indian Muslims identified themselves first in terms of territorial loyalty and second in terms of their religion but in Bengal the current tendency had been to privilege religion as the primary mode of identification. The problem was that upper class ashraf Muslims had no interest in the and the lower class or

15 Rezaul Karim, “Bharatiya Musalmangan kon jati?” (“What nation are the Indian Muslims”) in his Pakistaner Bichar (Trial of Pakistan) (Calcutta, 1942,) cited in Asim Roy, “Being and Becoming a Muslim,” in Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, ed., Bengal: Rethinking History, 221.

16 The schisms and differential trajectories between the All India Muslim League and the Bengal Provincial Muslim League are clearly outlined in Abul Hashim, In Retrospection (Dhaka: Subarna Publishers, 1974). Also see Shila Sen, Muslim Politics in Bengal. Semanti Ghosh points out that a section of the provincial Muslim League promulgated ideas that were based more on social and democratic ideas than on religion. Semanti Ghosh, Nationalism and the Problem of 'Difference', Bengal, 1905—1947 (Unpublished Dissertation: Tufts University, 2000), 165.

17 S. Wajid Ali, Bengalees of Tomorrow (Calcutta: K.C. Dasgupta, 1945), 59.

35 atrap Muslims who spoke Bengali did not have the means to either read or write in the language.

According to Wajid Ali, “religion by itself is not sufficient to constitute a nation, for in that case

France and Spain would have formed a single undivided nation.” Further, he declared that

‘race’ and ‘language’ taken in isolation could not provide a basis of common nationality.18

Rather “a common historical background and a longing to remain unified and to work together for a common ideal of life are essential conditions of Nationality.”19

However, in noting the conditions for the creation of a nation, Wajid Ali disagreed that the entire subcontinent with its multiple regional cultures could be a nation. Rather, he was an ardent advocate of and in viewing Bengal as a nation that should be allowed rights of self-government and join the Indian Union only for the purposes of joint defense.

Painting a glorious picture of mutual accommodation between Hindus and Muslims of Bengal in the past, he noted, “there never has been any important riots between Bengalee Hindus and

Bengalee speaking Muslims. In the villages of Bengal Hindus and Muslims live peacefully side by side and on the whole on very friendly terms. They eat the same food, they speak the same language and they read the same literature.”20 Current communal problems that the British had artificially generated did not reflect the ‘natural’ will of the Bengalees “whatever their religion,

[who] want to live and work together for the general welfare of the people of Bengal.”21

Wajid Ali, writing in the mid 1940s, was not alone in his advocacy of national self- identity on the basis of Hindu-Muslim unity and common Bengali language and culture. In the

18 Ibid., 131.

19 Ibid.

20 Ibid., 138.

21 Ibid., 139.

36 earlier decades, Bengali leaders such as Bipin Pal22, Rabindranath Tagore23 and Sarat

Chandra Bose24 had been vocal about their support for Bengal as a nation. Although their arguments were often couched within regional idioms, little slippage existed between the regional dimensions and valorization of the region and its identity as essential components of the broader Indian nation. In his protest speech against the Communal Award of 1932, Tagore noted that “The Partition (1905) was a mere geographical and physical partition, introducing a division of territory. The Communal Award introduces a moral and spiritual division, and creates a complete social cleavage between communities, making it impossible for them to ever come together on the basis of common citizenship.”25 For Tagore, territorial coordinates remained subsidiary to the national imagination and the Communal Award had severed this imagination more permanently than any territorial division could possibly have done. Bipin Pal, an advocate of composite patriotism, argued that

Nationalism in India, even if it works upon its legitimate composite character and constitution, and makes the fullest possible accommodation of , as an organic element of Indian, as distinguished from -would never mean for the followers of Islam what nationalism means in Persia and Turkey for their Persian or Turkish co-religionists.26

22 Pal was a well-known nationalist leader who was active in the agitation against the Partition of Bengal in 1905. He also founded the newspaper Bande Mataram and continued to be an active Congress member until his death in 1932.

23 A Noble Laureate, Tagore was one of the most prominent in Bengal in the first half of the twentieth century. His ideas on nationalism emphasized the spiritual domain.

24 A prominent Congressman, Sarat Bose spearheaded the movement for United Bengal in the early months of 1947.

25 Bengal Anti-Communal Award, A Report (Calcutta: The Secretaries Bengal Anti-Communal Award Committee, 1939), 2. was the president of this committee, which included prominent Bengali intellectuals such as B.C. Mahtab, the of Burdwan, Kumud Mookerji, Tushar Kanti Ghosh, Dr. Nalinakshya Sanyal and Sir P.C. Ray.

26 , Nationality and Empire, A Running Study of Some Current Indian Problems (Calcutta: Thacker, Spink & Co., 1916,) 387.

37 Although Pal was writing in 1916, a decade after the first Partition of Bengal and addressed mainly the growing trend of pan- as a parallel force to Indian nationalist ideals, later nationalist leaders such as C. R Das and Sarat Bose subscribed to his advocacy of a plural nation composed of different regions, religions and cultures.27

British rule in India continued to provide the main basis of unity for this composite national ideal and it would be wrong to argue that Indian nationalism so defined had been replaced by communal wrangling for power and territory. Even as late as January 1947, Abul

Hashim, a noted advocate of the United Bengal Plan, hoped that “When British interests in India withdraw, the mutual hatred between Hindus and Muslims will vanish into thin air. The Cabinet

Mission plan has sown the seeds of dissension between us and the subsequent utterances and activities of the agents of British imperialism are directly responsible for what happened in this country.”28 There were several reasons why in the last two decades of imperial rule possibilities of a Bengali nation did not turn to reality. Tagore died in 1941 and Sarat Bose was imprisoned the next year until the end of the Second World War. Because of his disagreements with the political elite within the All India Muslim League, Abul Hashim remained marginalized in

Bengal politics which increasingly showed signs of divisive power politics along communal lines.

In the months leading up to the Partition, several issues were crucial. The demands for and against Partition did not reduce the space for the articulation of identity based on territory and region. In post-Partition Bengal, the ready availability of a communal rhetoric after the

27 On January 29, 1944, while in prison, Sarat Bose wrote, “ I conceive my country as a Union of Socialist Republics-an immense in which the characters of all the races and nationalities comprised in it will be mixed and out of which a new ‘worldism’ will arise which will recognize no frontiers, no races and no classes.” Quoted in his Press Statement on 20th May 1947 at Calcutta. Sarat Bose, Selected Speeches and Writings, 1947-1950 (Calcutta: Thackers Press, 1954), 3.

28 ABP, 10 January 1947, 4.

38 Partition reinforced by state policies at times displaced territory and local identity as the primary signifiers of citizenship in the region. However, in 1947, the significant themes within public discourse were territorial and political representation – who belonged where and why, and which political party would most likely be able to represent their political rights. In this calculation, the Muslim League came up short since it had never identified itself as the party to represent rights of non-Muslims. However British administrative policies ensured that religious demography remain the only form of political differentiation in the 1930s and 1940s. The peculiar political landscape of Bengal meant that the politics of representation also incorporated issues of peasant rights and freedom from Hindu landlord domination and the cultural flowering of Muslims who could and did re-invent the struggle of their identity within and outside the national movement. For Hindus, such quotas for political representation meant that their political power was curtailed. Although some nationalist leaders interpreted these measures as another instance of the British strike against the nationalist movement, others, mainly sections of the

Hindu bhadralok, saw them as curtailments of their cultural leadership of Bengali society at large.

The association between political and cultural leadership was not new. However, given the politics of the time and the unique structural and demographic calculus of Bengali society, the often narrow collapsing of national identity with religious identity became inevitable.

However, all through the 1930s and 40s, some Bengali leaders, both Muslim and Hindu, continued to work together within a political structure based on religious ‘difference’. The issue of joint electorates remained central to the public discourse during this period and even as late as

April 1947, sections of the Bengal Congress led by Sarat Bose hoped that some province-based solution guaranteeing joint representation would be worked out at the political level.

39 For the All India Congress, the Muslim League’s claim to represent Muslims of the subcontinent and their demand for a separate nation dramatically challenged the Congress’ claim to be the sole representative of all communities. Further, the Pakistan demand was interpreted as divisive and anti-national, at least against the Congress conception of a plural and composite nation. Within Bengal, the provincial Congress remained divided on the issue of political and regional representation. B. C. Roy and some others remained loyal to the All India Congress’s commitment to a united India and no Pakistan, but Sarat Bose led a splinter group that began to work for a province base solution.

Problems of political representation continued but two events immediately influenced and hardened positions. The announcement of the Cabinet Mission Plan in March 1946 decisively indicated British plans for transferring power to Indians. Although the Cabinet Mission was projected within political circles as the last ditch effort to avoid Partition and Pakistan, its failure to reach any consensus between the Congress and the League representatives assured the possibility of Pakistan. Congress leaders in Bengal began to think seriously about partitioning the province to assure their continued political prominence within free India. However, their support was always predicated on the belief that their particular territorial constituency would become part of India.29 The 1946 riots sealed their decision in favor of Partition.

By late 1946, many Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims, were convinced that Pakistan whatever its constitutional structure and spatial coordinates was inevitable. However, what needs to be emphasized is the ideological confusion that accompanied such a conviction. For some sections of urbanized Bengali Hindus, Pakistan had come to mean a permanent loss of political

29 For details on vote on the Partition Boundary, see Chapter 3.

40 sovereignty and their subjection to “Muslim tyranny.”30 For most, “Pakistan” continued remain fuzzy, an idea which made no distinctive efforts to move away from its initial conceptualization of a nation based on a religious majority.31 Concerns about the status of non-Muslims within a purported “homeland for the Muslims” became a corollary for any discussion on the political future of India.

For those invested with a unitary idea of the Indian nation, the Pakistan demand continued to signify a “division” whose separation directly attacked the very definition of the

“nation”. One such advocate articulated these concerns about Pakistan in the leading English- language newspaper Standard. Using the pseudonym ‘One nation-wallah’ the directed his questions to Jinnah and asked “Will Pakistan have Islam as a ? Or will it be a secular state? If the state will have Islam as its official religion how do you guarantee to non-Muslims? Will non-Muslims have the right to claim self- determination in Pakistan territories as you claim for Muslims in India?” Moving away from the issue of religious rights, the writer also asked “What are the territories of Pakistan and the percentages of Muslims and non-Muslims in each of the territories claimed? In order to achieve homogeneity would you agree to withdraw all Muslims from Hindustan and force all non-

Muslims to leave Pakistan?”32 This future citizen raised relevant but difficult questions.

While discussions on the recent riots framed public discourse during the latter half of

1946, partitioning of the province along communal lines was yet to gain any currency. The riots

30 Joya Chatterjee, Bengal Divided, 232.

31 Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that Muslim politics in Bengal through out the 1930s and 1940s was singularly non-hegemonic in relation to the Hindu minority in Bengal. This was due to the continuation of League politics in Bengal as politics of the minority even while they were a majority within the province. Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 36.

32 Hindustan Standard (henceforth, HS), 10 January 1946, 6.

41 had clearly identified in the minds of some Calcutta citizens, the ineffectual and “communal” nature of the Muslim League administration in Bengal. The Hindustan Standard in its editorial entitled “Need of the Hour,” accused the Muslim League of having descended to the “frank hooliganism,” and had “consisted in the preaching of communal hatred against those who want to see India free and maintain her unity.”33 Among the several letters to the Hindustan Standard and Amrita Bazar Patrika, one demanded that,

We must rise up in one voice against all organized individual and mass murders, hooliganism, loot, and crime and demand the immediate removal of a medieval communal rule, which by its own actions, has forfeited every moral and political sanction…. We emphatically deny the monopoly of any single community to rule over Bengal…we shall not be isolated from the rest of India and shall tolerate no Pakistan in any form or disguise. Bengal has been and shall be an integral part of India and shall continue to be the homeland of all communities who inhabit the province.34

The letter writers were mainly educated Hindus but the newspapers also had quite a few

Muslim contributors. 35 These letters became a regular feature of public communication in the months after the August riots. Their contents ranged from arguments to dissociate politics and religion, the breach of duty on the part of the League government, the need for self-rehabilitation after the riots, to identifying League brand of “communalism as the offspring of imperialism.”36

For the writers, Pakistan remains nebulous and at best a signifier of Muslim domination over

Hindus, but Partition as a possibility had yet to gain wide acceptance.

33 HS, 9 September 1946, 4.

34 HS, 26 September 1946, 4.

35 HS, 11 September 1946, 4. A large number of these letters were also written under pseudonyms which make it difficult to quantify the religious demographics of the writers.

36 HS 29 September 1946, 4. Such letters were published almost daily throughout September 1946 until January 1947.

42 Even while targeting the Muslim League ministry, most of these letter writers emphasized that the communal problem was an assault from the “outside”. The Bengali Muslims who were of “honest hardworking” stock were not the culprits but rather people who were not

Bengali and had no association with its culture and language. The Hindustan Standard, in its editorial of September 22, 1946, noted that,

We have nothing to say against the statement when it is made as a general proposition that Muslims have no enmity with Hindus and they want to and in fact live as brothers with their Hindu neighbors. We have known it to be a fact of the for centuries and we know it to be a fact even today. We have no doubt that Bengali Muslims –simple honest hardworking folk-who for have lived in peace and amity with their Hindu neighbors has no taste even today for the blood of his inoffensive Hindu neighbor. But the trouble is he is not allowed to function as a free agent, not even as a conscious and intelligent human being by the unscrupulous agents of the Muslim League.37

Fictional representations of the riots in later years continued to emphasize the sense of assault from the outside, perpetrated by non-local Muslims.38

The association between the riots and the ‘communal’ League ministry also underscored the immediate need for the separation of religion from politics within Bengal. Responding to an editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika which was critical of the League ministry in Bengal, one observer noted that,

For the last one thousand years, Bengali Hindus and Bengali Muslims have lived side by side through many vicissitudes. They have both found it quite possible to live under the same social set up. Today the Muslim League does not agree to living together … It has brought communal hysteria to the pitch of exclusivism. If the Muslim League does not agree to living together the only course open to the Bengal Hindus is to claim and enforce by every means at their disposal a partition of the province.39

37 HS, 22 September 1946, 4.

38 See short stories by Achintya Kumar , “Swakshar” (Signature) and Narayan Gangopadhya “Izzat”(Honor) and in Manabendra Bandyapadhya ed. Bhed-Bhibed, Vol. I (Calcutta: Dey’s Publishing, 1995), 126- 129, 210-220.

39 ABP, 18 January 1947, 4.

43 The identification of the League with the politics of exclusivism had been confirmed with the appointment of Hasan Shaheed Suhrawardy, a well-known Bengali Muslim League leader, as the provincial premier in April 1946. Suhrawardy, the Civil Supplies Minister during the Bengal

Famine of 1943, had long been identified as corrupt and responsible for the large number of famine related deaths. Further, immediately after assuming power, he reduced the number of

Hindu ministers within the Bengal government to three out of a possible eleven. Out of the three, two were from the Scheduled Castes.40 The political dominance of the League ministry, and its inability (and culpability in the eyes of some) to control the riots of 1946, ensured that significant elements of the public demanded the removal of the League from power. Kiran Sankar Roy, a

Congressman and leader of the opposition in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, submitted a memorandum to the British Government outlining the misgovernment of the League ministry41.

The main charges were that of corruption, discrimination against Hindu minorities in politics and education and the lack of proper scientific development of the province. However, the politics of the time required religious affiliation as the primary method of political representation which meant that the opposition of the League ministry in Bengal was composed entirely of minority

Hindus. Claims for a change in administration thus couched itself within religion and had to play by the colonial rules of separate electorates. Thus Kiran Sankar Roy’s criticisms consistently also took into account the ‘communal’ nature of the League ministry.

40 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 230.

41 “Maladministration of League Government in Bengal: Letter and Memorandum from Kiran Sankar Roy, Bengal Congress Assembly Party Leader,” dated 25 April 1947. File: L/P&J/7/12231 7749, April May 1947, Oriental and India Office Collection (henceforth OIOC), London.

44 Demands for Partition: To divide or not to divide

The establishment of the Hindu Mahasabha sponsored Partition League in December

1946 signaled the emergence of a organized movement among Bengali Hindus that demanded a

“separate homeland for the Hindus.” Joya Chatterji notes that the members of the Partition

League were mainly from the Hindu bhadralok of the Hindu majority areas of the western

Bengal. 42 Moreover, Partha Chatterjee has argued that that in terms of mass mobilizations of the time, the movement to partition Bengal was not only small scale but also involved proponents who were not key political players. Further, all the pleas and petitions were sent to leaders in

Delhi and reflected an inherent inability to take charge of their own political future.43 Although I agree with Partha Chatterjee on the inability of the public discourse in Bengal to translate their demands into political reality, he too assumes that such demands had the clear, unified goal of partitioning Bengal. Rather, as we shall see, the public opinion in the period prior to the Partition voiced multiple concerns that were not always in favor of division.

Even as the Bengalis realized that they had little power to decide their political futures, they consistently wrote to the major leaders, newspapers and magazines and published pamphlets hoping to influence their political representatives. Some of their articles and booklets reflected the growing paranoia and strengthening of religious identity for a section of the Bengali bhadralok, who resided mainly in western parts of Bengal and in urban centers, especially

Calcutta and Dacca. For other members of the educated Bengali elite, the linguistic and territorial unity of Bengal and its place within India were main issues of the day. Within the claims and counterclaims of identity and culture and contestations of space, the demands also reflected the

42 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 240.

43 Partha Chatterjee, “The Second Partition of Bengal,” 38.

45 extreme confusion and doubts about the future status of Bengal. A cartoon in the Amrita Bazar

Patrika published in May 1947, graphically captured the doubts and confusion in people’s minds.44 It showed four key public and political figures, H. S. Suhrawardy, Shyamaprasad

Mookerjee, the leader of the Hindu Mahasabha, M. A. Jinnah, and M. K. Gandhi each with a placard with their respective propositions. Thus Suhrawardy holds “United Bengal in Divided

India,” Mookerjee “Divided Bengal in United India,” Jinnah “Divided Bengal in Divided India,” and Gandhi holds up a sign with “United Bengal in United India.”45 Presented with multiple choices within a limited time frame for independence and/or partition, Bengalis changed their political positions contingent upon the mercurial political situation within Bengal.

Within the Bengali Hindu public, the issue of partitioning the province became the center of heated debate. The Hindu Mahasabha’s political platform of a separate Hindu homeland found an echo within the demands to partition in order to remain within “nationalist India.” In over four hundred petitions addressed to the district and provincial Congress leaders, Bengalis mainly from western parts of the province urged for inclusion. Most of the petitions duplicated each other in their language and format. Their structure was thus,

Subject: Demand for the formation of a separate West Bengal Province. With respectful prayers: We wish to remain subject to the Independent Indian Federation. We inform you of the demand for a proposed ‘West Bengal Province.’ This province will remain within the Independent Indian Federation.46

44 See Appendix I (a) of this dissertation.

45 ABP, 6 May 1947, 5.

46 File: G-54/1947,Part I; CL-14 (A)/ 1946; CL-14 (B)/1946-47, All India Congress Committee (henceforth AICC) Papers, Nehru Memorial and Museum Library (henceforth NMML), New Delhi.

46 Two things immediately stand out when reading these petitions. First, clear evidence that the campaign to Partition was well organized,47 but limited to mainly the western parts of the province. Second, the language of the petitions frames their demands around inclusion within

India which at no point is seen as a “Hindu homeland.” Although these petitions paralleled the

Hindu Mahasabha demands to partition the province, the nuanced differences between the two has to be taken into account in a study of communalism in Bengal.

Many urban, middle class Hindu citizens of Calcutta and Dacca advocated Partition in the name of “saving” the Hindu religion and culture. In a letter, Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, evoked the glorious past of the Hindus to question whether it was mere “cowardice” on their part, which restrained them from taking appropriate action. He wrote,

Are we the inheritors of a culture that has produced some of the greatest minds of modern times, some of the great sages and seers and savants who are rightly hailed as the makers of Modern India? Are we to perish and disappear from the face of the earth for want of political vision and for want of courage to face the stark and grim realities of the present political situation? 48

The only remedy in Mookerjee’s view was Partition and the creation of a new province that would give the Bengali Hindus, “…save the priceless heritage of their culture, and a safe haven of refuge.”

Major General A. C. Chatterjee, the President of the provincial wing of Hind

Fauj (Indian National Army) echoed this theme of masculinity and cultural territory. In

December 1946, he reputedly declared that,

The Bengalee Hindus are now faced with a new danger- the danger of total extinction and being reduced to the position of Jews. We believe that Hindus and

47 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided, 248.

48 ABP, 21 January 1947. Although the writer of this particular letter is Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, it is not clear if he is the same person as the Hindu Mahasabha leader of the same name.

47 Muslims belong to the same racial stock, language and culture and their economic interests are identical. Rightly or wrongly Muslims have been aligned against Hindus and placed in a position of absolute authoritarianism with no check with the results we all see today. Therefore, the partition is a move to self-defense particularly necessitated by the fact that neither the Congress nor any other national political organization has been able to carry the Muslim masses with them.49

Such arguments turned the Muslim League’s claim of “freedom from Hindu economic and cultural domination” on its head by arguing that the Bengali Hindus, by virtue of being minorities within Bengal, needed political freedom from being ruled by a “brute’ majority. Such a brand of communal , on the one hand, exorcised the ghosts of Muslim tyranny and medieval theocracy in Bengali life, which itself was projected as essentially Hindu and portrayed the Bengali Hindus as victims and minorities. On the other hand such arguments highlighted the reputation of the Hindu Bengalis as economic, social and cultural leaders who needed the partitioning of the province for their continued prominence.

In addition to political organizations like the Hindu Mahasabha, several others also capitalized on the fear of the “Muslim barbarian” in articulating their demands for a separate

Hindu homeland. At a conference in Birbhum, western Bengal, organized by the district Hindu

Mahasabha, Srischandra Nandy of , a major zamindar, asserted that there was a “vile conspiracy towards making the Bengal Hindus politically impotent.”50 In describing the “true” meaning of a country, he pointed out, “The term “country” is not simply a geographical connotation. Education, culture and civilization all go to form a country.” It was this very definition of country that was, in his view, under attack. “Due to Muslim League oppression, not only our system of education, culture and civilization, but even the honour of our

49 ABP, 21 January 1947, 4.

50 HS, May 27, 1947, 5.

48 women is at stake.”51 The demand for Partition was thus “self-defence.” By equating,

“impotency” and “women’s honour” with the “patriotic need” to defend one’s country as embodied in its culture and education, Srischandra directed attention to the core feelings of emasculation within certain sections of Bengali Hindus. Ironically, colonial about the essence of the Bengali Hindu male also played on the theme of emasculation and effeminacy.

The Bengali male was thus claimed to be essentially without vigor, lethargic and physically weak which contributed to his lack of moral backbone.52

In a booklet published in early 1947, Bhupendra C. Lahiri articulated the immediate need to have a “Hindu nation” in Bengal. After pointing out that in the current state of affairs, the

Hindus’ efforts to enter and influence the politics, education and the workforce had been stymied by communal reservations, Lahiri argues that the Partition of Bengal into Hindu majority and

Muslim majority provinces was not only possible in terms of geographical division but was the only way to ensure that the Hindus of eastern Bengal could be saved. In Lahiri’s view rather than undertaking a messy population exchange, “If the Hindus of eastern Bengal are ensured the support of the 3 crore Hindus of independent Bengal, the former would be much strengthened as a race than they are currently…The only way to save the Bengali Hindus is to ensure the preservation of the glory of Hindus in Western Bengal.”53

Similarly, another writer, using the pseudonym “Fairplay,” wrote, “ Bengali Hindus must face the grim reality before them. If they do so, then they will see how the good deeds done by patriotic Bengalis in an earlier day are gradually being nullified by the Muslim-dominated

51 Ibid.

52 Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The "Manly Englishman" and the "Effeminate Bengali" in the Late Nineteenth Century (New York: Manchester University Press, 1995).

53 Bhupendra Chandra Lahiri, Bange Hindu Rashtra Chai (The Need for a Hindu Nation in Bengal) (Calcutta: No Publisher, 1947), 119.

49 administration of the province.” 54 The writer, like Lahiri detailed the various economic and social opportunities which had been lost to the Bengali Hindus since the Communal Award, and argued that “For smooth running of the future administration of the province of Bengal in free

India the formation of a separate province consisting of West Bengal and and the

Bengali speaking districts of Bihar is absolutely necessary… The Bengali Hindus must have a home where they will be able to preserve their culture and adjust its administration to their needs.” Thus the perceived cultural threat to the “Hindu nation” could only be resolved through territorial separation.

The correlation between religion, culture and territory was not new. However, several other strands of argument were interwoven in the case for Partition. The extinction of the Bengali

Hindu “race” was a recurring motif which was evoked by some writers. One Charu Chandra

Sinha from , West Bengal, argued that the Bengalis had been “politically, socially, and economically maimed.” While he echoed the arguments about maladministration of the League

Ministry in the political and social field, he also pointed out that existing scarcity of food in

Bengal specifically targeted the Bengali Hindu race. He claimed that “ There is no vitaminous

[sic] food sustaining the life of the masses with the result that they are deteriorating in health day by day proving the truth of the theory that the Bengalis are going to be an extinct race.”55 The only way to save the situation was the creation of a separate homeland for the Hindus in Bengal.

Responding to anti-Partition stance of the Azad Hindu Fauj, Hemanta K. Sarkar, the

General Secretary of the provincial committee, identified the aims and objects of the movement for a Hindu homeland as not communal. Rather, it was in accordance with the ideal of Hindu

54 ABP, 17 January 1947, 4.

55 HS, 20 , 4.

50 Muslim unity in order to achieve complete independence of India. “We propose to fall in line with the rest of nationalist India to achieve that object by separating west Bengal as a province where the nationalist forces from all over Bengal may rally and strive instead of being throttled by a reactionary communal government in present Bengal conspiring to wipe out our very existence. Our aim is to create one more province in addition to the already numerous provinces of India the oneness of which remains as before.”56 Another writer from Dacca spoke in favor of the Cabinet Mission plan that, “The partition of Bengal does not imply a division of India or the acceptance of Pakistan. On the contrary, the constitution of West Bengal into a separate

Congress province that will join group A is the most effective means to prevent the partition of

India.”57 Sakti Ranjan Bose in his letter to the editor of the Hindustan Standard offered yet another interesting reason for demanding the Partition. “I do not have to emphasize that our ambition is not to create a separate homeland for Hindus but to increase the territories under the

Indian union. Why we want a separate state in the west is not because the majority is Hindu but because the majority population would like to form itself in a state, which is connected with the center.”58 Partition for these advocates was necessary to ensure the continuation of their citizenship within India.

Not all Hindus in Bengal subscribed to the view that there was a need to create a new province. The fault lines of the debate on the Partition of the province are captured clearly in the writings of Naresh Chandra Gupta and D.N Sen. In “An appeal to Sons and Daughters of

Bengal,” Naresh Gupta urged the Bengalis not to be swept away by in favor of the

56 ABP, 19 January 1947, 4.

57 ABP, 21 January 1947, 4.

58 HS, 29 March 1947, 4.

51 partitioning the province. He pointed out that “Hindus of Bengal have suffered terribly of late though Muslims too could not but suffer to a larger extent.” However, Gupta asserted that partitioning the province along communal lines was not a remedy at all. 59 Rather, “the continuance of a united Bengal freed from the canker of communal electorates and a communal ministry, continuing as a member of the Indian union” was a better option and urged his fellow

Bengalis to “strive and toil and fight for that rather than to seek a partition of the province which but forty years ago people considered to be an intolerable calamity?” The persistent struggle by the Bengalis had “unsettled the settled fact” earlier. For Gupta, like Gandhi, an advocate of a united Bengal within the Indian Union, Partition was the very anti-thesis of nationalist ideals.

The ongoing proposal for a ‘homeland for Bengali Hindus’ was in Gupta’s view fallacious as “Bengal Hindus are not like Jews, wanderers in foreign lands, they have their homes in land which is their own and which generations of ancestors have made their own…the promise of this homeland which seeks to pluck them out of the land to which they are rooted in tradition and sentiment of centuries.”60 The allusion to Jews searching for a homeland became a recurrent motif in the refugee discourse in the post Partition period. For example, Jadunath

Sarkar, a well-known historian of Bengal, compared the socio political situation of East Bengal under the majority Muslim government with Palestine before “the Jews…turned the dessert into a garden.”61

On the other side of the coin, D. N. Bannerjee, a professor at the Dacca University, argued that Partition was the “only solution.” He argued,

59 HS, 23 April 1947, 4.

60 Ibid.

61 , “Brothers from Over the River,” in Modern Review (henceforth MR), September 1948, Vol. 84, 236. Also see, Salil Sen‘Natun Ihudi’ (The New Jew) reprinted in Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta, eds. The Trauma and the Triumph.

52 The whole future of the entire Hindu community of Bengal is in serious peril today, that this community which has suffered so tremendously during the last sixty years for building up Indian nationalism and for the freedom of in the imminent danger in view of the impending constitutional changes of being reduced to absolute political impotence and even abject slavery; that there is a great probability of an admittedly medieval theocratic state being established in Bengal with all its consequences; and that because of their questionable slight inferiority of number the lot of the Hindus in Bengal may soon become, unless timely action is taken that of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water for a people who are by their own admission inferior to them in so many respects.62

The call for Hindu “culture in danger” had long been a part of the Bengal political landscape and was recurrently evoked at moments of political crisis.

Although Bengali Muslims generally supported the demand for Pakistan, within the political leadership of the Bengal Provincial Muslim League and the Krishak Praja Party, a socialist peasant party, there was no consensus on the meaning and program of the virtual

Pakistan. The historiography on Muslim politics has conclusively shown that in Bengal, the

Pakistan idea had moved away from its central focus on religion as the basis of unity and had metamorphosed into a more socio- democratic ideal resulting in a myriad of “.”63 The multiple promises of Pakistan, from being a peasant utopia to a nation based on socio democratic principles and a nation free from Hindu domination, found favor not only with the illiterate, poor and less informed Muslim peasantry in rural areas, but also within groups of highly literate and politically aware urban Muslims principally based in Dacca and Calcutta.

However, inspite of the democratic socialist stance of some of the Muslim leadership in

Bengal, they remained limited in their ability to bring the minorities in Bengal within their political ambit. Abul Hashim, the secretary of the Bengal provincial Muslim League, promised

62 HS, 1 May 1947, 4.

63 For an elaboration of this issue see, Taj-ul- Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal 1920-1947 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992); Semanti Ghosh, Nationalism and the Problem of ‘Difference.

53 that the “ Free state of Eastern Pakistan will be ruled and governed by the entire people on a basis of universal adult suffrage” and assured that the minorities in Muslim majority provinces would be safe. However, even as he pointed out that “Muslims will have no special rights for themselves except to govern their own society according to the principles of their own religion” and “no political and economic safeguards will be granted to the Muslims [in the new state]” he and his colleagues in the ministry remained unclear about how such proposals would materially affect the minorities and their rights.64

Even among Bengali Muslims, some questioned the rights of the All India Muslim

League and its Bengal branch to represent Muslims of the region.65 Several letters to the

Hindustan Standard stressed the common cultural and linguistic background of the Bengali

Hindus and Muslims. The current divide, according to these writers was due to colonial machinations. In May 1947, a Bengali Muslim that outlined meaning of Pakistan thus,

By keeping silent over the details of economic and political structure of the contemplated Pakistan our leaders have allowed the Mahomedan mass to believe that it will be a land of milk and honey. But Pakistan as it is already in the offing, does not seem to be a cheering prospect to us, the Bengal Mahomedans. Firstly, Mahomedans of different provinces are infiltrating into Bengal. These immigrants thinking themselves of a noble descent cherish a most contemptuous attitude towards the Bengali Mahomedans most of whom are illiterate peasants and as it is low born converts. These immigrants have a smattering of English and are out to dominate the Bengali Mahomedans both politically and intellectually. They will form the Mahomedan middle class in Bengal by monopolizing all the government jobs. An examination of the Muslim League high command and the coterie of Muslim members of the interim government points to the future domination of Moslem India by non- Bengalis. Secondly, Pakistan means, it is clear, the greatest advantage of the Muslim capitalists and business magnates. None of them are Bengalis. Hence Bengali mahomedans will have very little to hope from them.66

64 Abul Hashim, “Why This Hindu Muslim ‘Hatred’, British Imperialism 100 percent Responsible,” ABP, 10 January 1947, 4.

65 See letters to the editor in HS, 11 September 1946, 4; 17 September 1946, 4; 5 December 1946, 4; 17 December 1946, 4.

66 HS, 17 May 1947, 4.

54 The writer, who identified himself only as a “Bengali Mahomedan,” questioned the hegemonic ambitions of the Pakistan demand to represent all Muslims of the subcontinent. He further questioned the ability of the Muslims, who were culturally and linguistically different than the

Bengali Muslims, to represent or respond to regional concerns. The idea of Pakistan for this particular writer thus did not hold out the promise of a socialist revolution whereby the Bengali

Muslim peasantry could also be free of the “capitalists and business magnates.” In some ways, his concerns seem prophetic in the light of the trajectory East Bengal followed after 1947.

Opinion among the scheduled caste leadership within Bengal was also divided. Although

Jogendra Nath Mandal, the leader of the Scheduled Caste Federation which was politically aligned with the Muslim League, voiced his support against the Partition of Bengal, other leaders such as Radhanath Das, a member of the Constituent Assembly, and Birat Mandal, the leader the

All India Depressed Class Association argued that the League could not guarantee safety for the scheduled castes in eastern Bengal and the interests of the group would be best served within a divided Bengal.67 In a press conference at Delhi, Mandal pointed out that the Partition of Bengal would not solve the current problems and would in fact reduce the Hindus of East Bengal to an insignificant minority. Further, he pointed out that in the event of an exchange of population, the

Scheduled castes of eastern Bengal, comprising mainly the poorer sections of the Hindu community, would not have the means to make the move across the borders.68 Mandal had some support from scheduled caste groups such as the North Bengal Rajbanshi Kshatriya Samity which passed a resolution against the Partition on April 27, 1947 at Rangpur in northern Bengal.

67 Jagadishchandra Mandal, Banga Bhanga (Calcutta: Mahapran Publishing Society 1977), 39-42.

68 , 17 May 1947, 5.

55 However, scheduled caste leaders such as Radhanath Das, whom Jogendra Mandal had defeated in the 1940 Calcutta Corporation elections, argued that “If we ask our brothers in Noakhali to come to West Bengal and the government of West and North Bengal will provide them with shelter and other economic requirements, then I am prepared to swear that

Jogen [Jogendra Mandal] will not able to keep a single one of his caste brothers in

Noakhali.” Further, he argued that it would be easy for the scheduled castes to move precisely because “ in terms of their homes, they only have small huts, which they would not have much compunction or problem in leaving” and moving to western Bengal.69

In response to Das, Dwarikanath Barori, who sided with Mandal, argued, “it’s a novel discovery [on Das’s part] that the scheduled castes’ attachment to their home would be less because they lived in huts,”70 and added that in reality a majority of that community owned substantial property. Clearly, the main issue in the debate on partitioning Bengal, at least for this group of community leaders, was whether the new province in the west would be able to guarantee economic opportunities for the scheduled castes.71

Land ownership and other economic factors were central to several citizens of eastern

Bengal as they wrote to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee requesting him to ensure their economic and cultural security in the event that the province was divided. They argued that,

The monied [sic] men of the district [Noakhali] who have business in Calcutta and elsewhere and who have sufficient means for their removal are now earnestly supporting the question of partition of Bengal. But it is a question for the middle and depressed class Hindus of East Bengal to think over the matter seriously…under the present

69 Jagadishchandra Mandal, Banga Bhanga, 43.

70 Ibid. 45.

71 When the issue of Partition was put to vote in the Bengal Assembly, only five of the thirty scheduled caste members voted against the Partition.

56 circumstances it can very safely be said that their position will be more worse [sic] by such partition.72

The writers of these petitions then provided a solution to their communal and economic dilemma in eastern Bengal by requesting that uncultivated land belonging to Hindu in western

Bengal, be requisitioned by the provincial government and allotted to them in the name of saving their co-religionists. The fact that such land were already being used to rehabilitate Muslim refugees from Bihar after the 1946 riots only helped strengthen the communal facade for a demand for economic restitution.

Between February 20 and June 20, 1947, a mere four months from the announcement of the British decision to leave India to the Bengal Assembly’s vote for partitioning the province and the western half joining the Indian Union, the Partition discourse reached a fevered peak.

The acceptance of the Punjab Partition by the All India Congress at the national level clearly indicated for the people in Bengal that Partition of their province was not only plausible but also imminent. The Hindu Mahasabha, which had initially advocated the idea of an “Akhand

Hindustan” (Unbroken India), changed its stance after the riots of 1946 and focused on retaining as much territory as possible for a “Hindu India.” In February 1947, it appointed a Working

Committee to report on “the feasibility and desirability of having a separate province for securing a homeland for Bengal Hindus.”73 At a conference at Tarakeshwar, Mahasabha workers passed a resolution to begin a campaign to “retain East Bengal Province…within the Indian

Union.”74

72 Petition dated , 1947, File: 32, S. P. Mookerjee Papers, NMML, New Delhi. Most of the signatories (around 20) were from the eastern district of Noakhali.

73 Hindu Outlook (New Delhi), 11 February 1947, in File: 102, Shyama Prasad Mukherjee Papers, II-IV Installment, NMML, New Delhi.

74 Ibid.

57 In the following months, as the Hindu Mahasabha deployed their cadres, the Bengal

Congress also jumped onto the bandwagon for Partition, albeit for different reasons. Veteran

Congress leaders such as and Kiran Sankar Roy publicly voiced their reasons for supporting the movement. In a series of public lectures and essay in major newspapers, Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, a veteran of the 1905 anti-Partition movement, assured those

Hindus who would surely become part of Pakistan in the event of the division that, “In a divided

Bengal those Hindus who might be left in East Bengal should have this satisfaction that West

Bengal as a separate province would be there as a safe home for Hindu culture and economic interests.”75 Using the metaphor that the Bengali Hindus were “living in a house on fire,” Sarkar dissociated the call for Partition as a consequence of the Cabinet Mission Plan and stressed that the demand was due to intrinsic problems within the Bengal body politic. “The Hindus have been forced into this position by extreme circumstances” whose roots lay in the ‘communal administration’ of the Bengal Muslim League. He then described in detail the “separatist tendencies” not only in the field of political representation but also in fields such as education and trade and industry. He emphasized that,

If the present policy of the League in Bengal had undergone a real change and in accordance with that change a constitution was evolved which made it possible for all sections of people to be imbued with the idea of a common citizenship overriding communal distinctions and thereby ruling out any communal domination, then indeed I believe the Hindus of Bengal would not think it necessary to press for a divided Bengal.76

Thus the demand for Partition, from Sarkar’s point of view had little to do with “saving one’s religion” but was a necessary step towards achieving the “nationalist” goals of Bengal. Similarly,

Kiran Sankar Roy, in a forty-page memorandum to the British Prime Minister and Secretary of

75 Nalini Ranjan Sarkar, “Partition Demand not outcome of Cabinet Mission Plan,” ABP, 15 March 1947, 4.

76 Ibid.

58 State, drafted by Bengal Congress party, charged the League administration of corruption, discrimination against Hindus and the cause for the general retrogression in the province.77 In addition it held the League singularly responsible for “spreading the virus of communalism” in

Bengal’s politics and culture. Although Kiran Sankar was a partial advocate of the United

Bengal Movement promoted by Sarat Bose, Abul Hashim and Suhrawardy, he, like other members of Bengal Congress, ultimately argued in terms of the political necessity for Partition to ensure the survival of the Indian state.

Those who had hitherto been against the partitioning of the province in April 1947 began to see it as a necessary evil and to justify it in terms of historical necessity. Using several biological metaphors of “canker” for Pakistan that needed to be removed for the general health of the Indian body politic, Partition now became the solution to the contemporary communal problems. For Niharendu Dutta Mazumdar, a Congress member of the Bengal Legislative

Assembly, the issue at stake was not religion but “how to save Indian nationalism in Bengal against the dark forces of politico communal reaction.” He urged the people not to split over the issue of Partition, but to form “patriotic Councils of Action” comprising both Hindus and

Muslims to combat “League tyranny.”78

Some went on to argue that Partition would again be annulled once the Bengali Muslims realized that they could not survive alone. Krishnaprasanna Sinha, in a provocatively titled letter,

“Kill Pakistan,” wrote that,

If Bengal is divided it would be impossible for the Muslim League to carry on with only Eastern Bengal as a separate Muslim state…if only Calcutta is taken out it would be impossible for the Muslim state to function. It need hardly be emphasized that Calcutta is

77 “Maladministration of League Government in Bengal: Letter and Memorandum from Kiran Sankar Roy, Bengal Congress Assembly Party Leader,” dated 25 April 1947. File: L/P&J/7/12231 7749, April May 1947, OIOC.

78 HS, 4 March 1947, 3.

59 definitely a Hindu city, not merely by the standard of its Hindu population but also by the standard of lands and houses, which are mostly owned by the Hindus. West Bengal with Calcutta will be more self-supporting than merely east Bengal can every hope to be. If Muslim League is confronted with the two alternatives viz. to join the All India Union in the right spirit or form East Bengal as a separate Muslim state the Muslim League would prefer the former. The Bengalee Hindus must however make it quite clear that either the whole of Bengal joins the all India union or they separate.79

Although the claim for Calcutta led Sinha to identify it as a ‘Hindu city’ notwithstanding the sizeable Muslim and Christian population, a similar claim was not laid out for Dacca whose population was, by Sinha’s standards, predominantly Hindu. Thus the religious identity of

Calcutta camouflaged the economic motives in Sinha’s demand for the inclusion of the city in

West Bengal.

Similarly, Kalipada Mukherjee, Secretary of the Bengal Provincial Congress Committee, at a conference in Jessore in May 1947 publicly declared, that the Congress demand for Partition did not intend to abandon “Hindus and other national forces in East Bengal but it is believed and in no distant future it would be able by their strenuous efforts, to bring about the situation under which East Bengal should be forced to join the Indian Republic.”80 Although this conjecture did not agree with the official policy of the Bengal Congress, like Mukherjee, others believed that this Partition would also be annulled, as had the 1905 Partition.

For some groups Partition was a “necessary step” in the path of India’s progress towards freedom. Bhabadev Bhattacharjee, a professor of political philosophy at Ripon College in

Calcutta, used the metaphor of a joint family system to explain to his readers their current political reality. “If the joint family system has broken up as a result of impact of selfish ideas, how much is the danger of a country beset with warring creeds. Brothers have maintained better

79 ABP, 4 March 1947, 4.

80 ABP, 20 May 1947, 4.

60 relations by living separately in many cases than most of those who outwardly profess brotherhood and are compelled to eulogize on united life even though in their heart of hearts they have realized the hollowness of the actual situation. To fight the movement for Pakistan in the most practical way is to cry for partitioning of Bengal. A Muslim Bengal without Hindu Bengal is a hopeless idea.”81 Another writer, similarly argued that the

Moral partition of Bengal is already complete and notwithstanding the tender sentiments for an undivided Bengal. Constitutional partition is inevitable unless the Muslims in this province unequivocally repudiate the communal electorates and communal politics and unseat their present leadership which works against the emergence of a strong independent and progressive union of India to take her rightful place in the community of other great nations of the world.82

For those who still remained uncertain about their views on partitioning the province and found the current demand in contradiction to the earlier movement to annul the Partition in 1905, arguments about the continuation and preservation of nationalist ideals had more appeal than religion. Major General A. C. Chatterjee thus urged the nationalists to “attach themselves firmly with the rest of nationalist India.” This goal could only be possible with the creation of a new province which did not subscribe to the Pakistan ideal and thus ensured that it be part of nationalist India. Chatterjee argued that the nationalist goals that had led to wide ranging protests against the first Partition of Bengal in 1905 had not changed in 1947. In his view, the creation of a new province was being urged along similar lines and intended to “preserve the and integrity of the people who were nationalistic in outlook and who consider their language tradition and civilization as one, facts denied by the Muslim Leaguers.”83

81 HS, 25 March 1947, 4.

82 HS, 29 March 1947, 4.

83 HS, 3 April 1947, 3.

61 At a conference in in northern Bengal, attended by 500 delegates from that region, Pandit Kanta Maitra, a member of the Legislative Assembly, noted that there were three courses open to Bengali nationalists,

First was an abject surrender to the Muslim League. Hindus could not think of it. The second course was the violent method or a bloody civil war. Nationalist Hindus did not want to adopt this barbarous cruel path which was destructive of civilization. The third course was the creation of a new province, a homeland for the nationalists which would be linked with the Indian union and would remain within that union. 84

Maitra then contended that the imminent freedom of India from colonial rule was due to the sacrifice of Bengali Hindus who had now been forced to ask for a division because of “the irresistible logic of events and communal misrule which had sought to curtail the rights and privileges of the Hindus since its very inception.” By collapsing nationalist goals with religious identity, Maitra and others hoped to convince those who continued to doubt their political representative’s demands for Partition.

Between February and June 1947, representations from political units such as the

Municipal and Union Boards, civil groups like District Bar Associations and Zamindars

Associations, and local clubs flooded the offices of the Hindu Mahasabha and the AICC voicing their demands for Partition.85 A front-page cartoon in the Hindustan Standard depicted the

Viceroy being overwhelmed by nearly 10, 000 telegrams demanding the Partition of Bengal.86

Most of these petitions asked for the formation of a separate province of West Bengal that would remain within the Indian Union. 87

84 HS, 18 May 1947, 5.

85 File: G-54/1947, Part I, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

86 HS, 17 May 1947, 1. See Appendix I. (b) of this dissertation.

87 Joya Chatterjee has conclusively argued that the movement for partition was well orchestrated. Similarly, Sekhar Bandyopadhya has shown that there was also some amount of organization and plans to mobilize among the

62 The demand for partitioning the province spread to the districts and mofussil towns as leading newspapers continuously printed local resolutions. In addition to the usual justification to safeguard “the lives, properties, honor and culture of the Hindus and other minorities,”88 these resolutions argued that Partition was in keeping with the nationalist core of Bengal and India. For instance, Muktagachi, a in in eastern Bengal, passed a resolution by municipal commissioners who belonged to both communities. It noted that “in consideration of the present situation of the country and the move taken by the nationalist Bengal, the Partition of

Bengal has been essentially necessary in order to frame a constitution or free and nationalist

India.”89 Similarly the Dacca District Congress Committee passed a resolution on 15 May 1947 that stated,

The members of the Executive Committee have belief in the united India and the united Bengal as a unit of the Indian union. In case the division of India becomes inevitable on account of the unreasonable demand of the Muslim League as a natural corollary they claim that a separate unit with those districts of Bengal willing to join the Indian union is to be formed.90

Civil groups also put forward similar requests for inclusion within the Indian Union. A group of barristers based in Calcutta called for Partition, describing it as necessary to maintain an “organic relationship with the Indian Union” and as the only “rational chance of national salvation and of freedom from further torture and persecution under a communal regime.”91 Several petitions to

schedule castes of Bengal. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947(Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press, 1997).

88 Resolution passed by Hindu citizens of Rajshahi. Most newspapers like HS and ABP published such resolutions, which ranged from district political organizations to neighborhood meetings of non-Muslim residents of the area. HS, May 23, 1947, 7.

89 File: G-54/1947, Part I AICC Papers, April-May 1947, NMML, New Delhi.

90 Ibid.

91 ABP, 14 May 1947, 4.

63 Acharya Kripalani, the president of the AICC in 1947, were from industrial companies such as the India Cycle, Mackintosh Burn and Bharatia Electric Steel and local associations such as

Bally Sadharoni Sabha Milan Sangha, Chakraberia, Howrah, all of which passed resolutions in support of the Partition.92

Even at this late date, dissenters remained against the idea of any division of the province. One group led by Sarat Bose and Abul Hashim promoted the idea of a United Bengal, which would not be constitutionally part of India or Pakistan but have an independent identity. In a letter to Sardar Patel, Sarat Bose specified that “It is not a fact that Bengali Hindus unanimously demand Partition. As far as East Bengal is concerned, there is not the slightest doubt that the majority of Hindus were opposed to partition…the demand for Partition is more or less confined to the middle classes…Future generations will, I am afraid condemn us for conceding the division of India and supporting the partition of Bengal and Punjab”93 This plan did not find much support within the political ranks of the Bengal Congress or the Muslim

League. The Bengali public already inundated by Mahasabha propaganda was wary of the possibilities that Bengal as an independent entity might in the future join Pakistan.

A number of letters anthropomorphized India as a “motherland” and urged the readers to be patriotic sons in preventing the vivisection of their mother. 94 While one writer questioned, “

Is there none in Bengal to challenge this spurious census95 on which the Muslim League’s citadel of Pakistan is being built? It was the patriotic sons of Bengal who nullified the 1905 partition; is

92 File#G-54/1947, Part I, AICC Papers, NMML.

93 Letter dated 27 May 1947, in Das ed. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945-50, Vo. IV (: Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 45-6.

94 HS, 11 June 1947, 4.

95 The Census of 1941 was at the center of controversy during this period as it was the key document determining the areas based on religious demography.

64 there none to follow them to nullify the infernal Pakistan,”96 another urged, “No true Indian should entertain such absurd unreasonable and foolish ideas and all must cooperate to keep India united.”97 Jnanjan Pal, in a critical analysis of the future of a divided Bengal, identified several problems. He specified that,

By making our demand for a partition of the province on the basis of denominational religious communities we are likely to cloud the real issue. India cannot be communally divided, nor Bengal nor any other part of it. That will smother our progress; we will be going back to a perverted type of religious medievalism, absolutely unacceptable in the modern world…. A homeland for Bengali Hindus is therefore ideologically separated from the Indian union.98

As a solution to the communal issue, Pal urged a separation between religion and politics and an effort to achieve a complete secularization of political life. Such a process would be amply aided by implementing a common electorate on the basis of universal adult suffrage. The only way to solve Bengal’s problems was also to keep “ties with the other parts of India and with the Center or the Union firmly secured not for communal movies, but for essential political and economic advantages.” Pal was not an advocate of the United Bengal Plan. In his view, “Bengal’s sovereignty so called that is dissociated from the Indian Union, is thus fraught with immense mischief for India as also for Bengal.” However, if the political majority did not agree to the principles of democracy and common electorate, Partition would be forced upon all Bengalis.

Pal, however, hoped that the “Partition would be temporary in nature and would last till the communal madness had blown over.”99

96 HS, 25 March 1947, 4.

97 HS, 11 June 1947, 4.

98 HS, 19 May 1947, 7.

99 Ibid.

65 A group of Hindu residents of opposed the Partition proposal on the grounds that such a division would “disrupt the ancient unity and solidarity of Bengalee Hindus.”100 Several leaders within the Bengal Congress such as Akhil Chandra Datta, Leela Roy and Kamini Kumar

Datta, publicly declared that it would be “improper, suicidal for them to lend support Pakistan” and that “partition amounted to the acceptance of the basic principle of Pakistan namely the territorial division or re-adjustment on the basis of community or religion.”101 In April 1947,

Sarat Bose along with Kamini Kumar Datta formed the All Bengal Anti-Pakistan and Anti-

Partition Committee. At a conference, the members of this committee passed a resolution noting,

“The proposed partition on a religious basis would be in direct conflict with the principles of nationalism. That it would be a concession to the demand of Pakistan and that it would put

Hindus in eastern and northern Bengal districts in a desperate position.”102 In addition, the members decided to mobilize public opinion against Pakistan and Partition.

The Scramble for Territory

The Partition of the Indian subcontinent became inevitable when Indian leaders from both the Congress and Muslim League publicly accepted and endorsed Governor General Lord Louis

Mountbatten’s Plan of June 3, 1947. According to this Plan, the Muslim majority provinces of

Bengal, Punjab, Sind, the NWFP and Baluchistan would chose either the existing constitutional

100 HS, 4 March 1947, 3.

101 HS, 26 March 1947, 4. In several public meetings where anti partition resolutions were passed, Leela Roy repeatedly demanded “Our demand is that not a single Bengalee whether a Hindu or a Muslim must leave his homeland- whether he be in the eastern or the western part of Bengal. HS, 16 April 1947, 7.

102 ABP, 26 April 1947, 4.

66 assembly to frame their future constitution within a united Indian Union or a new and separate constituent assembly. 103

The certainty of Partition significantly changed the tenor of public discourse. Bengali

Hindus and Muslims began to couch their support for Partition within the specifics of territorial coordinates. Satish Chandra Roy asserted,

Nationalist Bengal should include the entire presidency and Burdwan divisions and the districts of Malda, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri, parts of Rajshahi, Pabna Rangpur districts to maintain the link between Bengal and Assam, thus uniting the easternmost province (i.e. Assam) of the union with the union of India. It would be better to include the entire north Bengal and the districts of Faridpur and bakerganj in the newly formed province which could give it a natural defence on the east by the rivers Jamuna, Padma, and Meghna.104

Similarly, the territorial coordinates of the new province of West Bengal was clearly outlined in the Jatiya Banga Sangathan Samity’s resolution as constituting “, Calcutta,

Presidency Division and Jalpaiguri, Darjeeling and Dinajpur in north Bengal and such other parts of Bengal whose inhabitants desire to remain within the Indian union.”105

Inclusion within India both in terms of territory and citizenship became the moot issue of the day. Thus several groups and petitioners unsure whether their locality would be part of India or Pakistan, evoked their contribution and sacrifices for the Indian freedom struggle, which they argued, should guarantee their inclusion in the free Indian state. Satish Chandra Roy argued that

Hindus in eastern Bengal were and would remain loyal to united India and that they “should be given rights of citizenship in the newly created province of Bengal and the union of India as well. They shall be eligible to services, trade education etc. in the province of Bengal and also in

103 For details see Gyanesh Kudaisya, Aftermath of Partition, and Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning a Frontier.”

104 HS, 17 April 1947, 4.

105 HS, 28 April 1947, 4.

67 the union government.” 106 Roy contended that if the Hindus of East Bengal were recognized as

Indian citizens, then “Pakistan will be compelled to give them their due share in the administration of East Bengal” and “even though they reside outside the union and be entitled to the full protection of the union government.”107

Roy was not alone in voicing his concern about the fate of the Hindus whose homes were most likely to be part of Pakistan. A deputation from Noakhali, one of the eastern most districts of Bengal, wrote to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee pointing out “If Bengal is partitioned no doubt the

Hindus of west Bengal will be saved, but what will be the position of the east Bengal Hindus under the Pakistan government? The Hindus of East Bengal paid as much for the present political improved state of affairs as for the independence of India. They sacrificed much and above all the lives of their boys and girls to fight out the Britishers from India.”108

Narendranath Biswas of Magura, a scheduled caste, had an ingenious solution to the problems affecting his community. He urged that the community, instead of living in different districts of Bengal, move their residence to the district of Jessore, and back their demand for inclusion within India with numerical strength.109 As one of the five districts whose future would be decided by the Boundary Commission, Jessore’s position was critical in Biswas’ demand for relocation. He wanted to ensure that when the time came for the decision, the district would have a numerical majority of non-Muslims to justify its inclusion within India.

The Bengal Legislative Assembly met on June 20, 1947 and voted to join the Indian

Union. In a separate ballot they voted to partition Bengal into East and West Bengal. On both

106 HS, 17 April 1947, 4.

107 Ibid.

108 Letter to Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, datd 7 May 1947 in File: 32, SP Mookerjee Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

109 HS, 15 May 1947, 4.

68 issues, the voting was divided along communal lines although the representatives had no way of knowing whether their respective areas would be in east or west Bengal. The representatives of the Hindu majority districts voted to join the Indian Union and to partition Bengal to that effect while the representatives of the Muslim majority districts voted for a separate union and against the Partition of Bengal.110

After the vote, the overarching issue was to ensure that one’s own locality continued to remain within one’s perceived nation and one continued to be an Indian or a Pakistan. Bengalis now wrote letters and passed resolutions providing rationales for the inclusion of a particular locality within India. The reasons mainly focused on economic, religious and cultural issues. For example, the Student’s Library of Howrah framed their support for the division in the following terms,

Although it believes in the existence of a united Bengal within united India, in order to protect the civil liberty of the people, the honour of women, the culture and tradition of Bengal and to form a separate and nationalist Bengal under the Indian Union, comprising of the parts of Dinajpur and Malda districts, and such other parts as are willing to come under the Indian Union and a regional ministry for the area should be set up immediately.111

After June 20, as it became clear that the Hindu majority districts of western Bengal would continue to remain within India, the focus of debate on inclusion and exclusion shifted to the eastern parts of Bengal. Religion continued to be one of the primary reasons of inclusion and religious contiguity was demonstrated by any means necessary. Thus the Natshal Young Men’s

Association, defined the eastern boundary of West Bengal as “the Padma and the river on the eastern side of the Pabna and Faridpur districts and from the Jamuna right up to the Atrai

110 The provisional West Bengal Legislative Assembly voted by 58 votes to 21 that the province should be partitioned and that West Bengal should join the existing Constituent Assembly.

111 File: G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

69 river in the Jalpaiguri districts through the districts of Pabna Rajshahi and Dinajpur” 112 and urged the authorities, both British and Indian, and the newly constituted Boundary

Commission113 to ensure that “the whole of Faridpore, Maldah Jalpaiguri and Darjeeling districts, the whole of Burdwan and , the western part of Barisal” be included within West Bengal. Their demands for maximum territory were couched in the earlier terms of preservation of Hindu culture and civilization.

In the scramble for territory, the city of Calcutta, seat of Bengali urban culture for both

Muslims and Hindus, became the most sought after because of its logistical, industrial and business infrastructure. A detailed petition to Lord Listowel, from S. M. Usam, ex-Mayor of

Calcutta, Mr. Abdus Sabur and Mr. Mahisuddin Ahmed, the President of the Bengal Jute

Grower’s Association, couched their demands for Calcutta in economic terms. The petition began by indicating that “East Bengal is the homeland of Jute and Calcutta is the byproduct of the marriage of Bengal jute with Hoogly river and it is for this reason Calcutta is rightly called the city of jute and port of jute.” Jute, the petitioners reminded, was produced solely by East

Bengal Muslim peasants and Scheduled classes. Such an organic connection between Calcutta and its eastern hinterlands would be severed in the case of Partition and if Calcutta was awarded to West Bengal.114 Thus the petitioners, as representatives of not only the Muslim farmers but also the port and industrial workers in Bengal, urged the British authorities to re-think and re- work their decision to partition Bengal. On the other side of the coin, D. N Banerjee, a professor

112 Ibid.

113 For details see Chapter 3. 114 Letter to Lord Listowel from S M Usam, Ex Mayor of Calcutta and President Indian National Maritime Union, Mr. Abdus Sabur Khan, MLA, and Mr. Mahisuddin Ahmed, President and Vice President, Bengal Jute Growers Association, Calcutta, in protest against any scheme of partitioning of Bengal, dated 22nd May 1947 (approx.) in File: L/P&J/7/12068 6076, Jan 1947-Jan 1948, Political Department, OIOC, London.

70 at Dacca University, noted, that Calcutta, by virtue of its population which was predominantly

Hindu, should be part of West Bengal.115

Conclusion

In the months leading up to the Partition, demands for and against the division of Bengal were based on multiple concerns and contingent decisions influenced heavily by fast paced changes in the negotiations between the British and Indian leaders. Even after the June 20 decision, Bengalis had little idea how and what the Partition would entail. As we shall see, the confusion continued to plague both Indian and Pakistani State’s attempts to establish a post-

Partition national order and in the actions of those directly affected by such a project, the new minorities and those living at the newly demarcated borders.

115 HS, 7 May 1947, 4.

71 Chapter 3

The Making of National Borders

The Boundary will be an international boundary, separating two independent sovereign states. Such boundary marks the limits of the region within which a state can exercise its sovereign authority, and with its location, various matters relating to immigration and restriction on visitors, imposition of custom duties and prevention of smuggling and contraband trade, are bound up. The boundary should undoubtedly be drawn up in such a manner as would obviate chances of friction and clashes in peacetime.1

Once the vote in favor of Partition of India and the Partition of Bengal was announced in June 1947, political and public concern in Bengal shifted to the territorial aspects of how and where the Partition would actually take place. The predicament of the division became real as Congress, Muslim League and Hindu Mahasabha leaders entered into intense and often fractious negotiations to determine which areas of Bengal would fall within their constituencies. In addition, educated Bengalis, both Hindus and Muslims sent in suggestions and requests for inclusion and exclusion, hoping to influence the decision of their political representatives. The discourse on the border reflected both territorial concerns and provided the space for the articulation of putative national identities.

This chapter focuses on the delineation, establishment and the control of one of the actualities of the Partition decision, the international border. The confusion generated at its creation did not disappear after the publication of the Boundary Commission report on August

17, 1947. Rather, the border between India and East Pakistan continued to be a contested zone both in terms of territorial demarcations and within the project of defining who could and could

1 Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, File: Misc.B-1/1947, Home Political (Secret), Proceedings before the Boundary Commission, 1947, West Bengal State Archives (henceforth WBSA), Calcutta, 13.

75 not be their citizens. In the process, the border became a site invested with security and honor of the respective nations.

As both countries outlined and implemented legal and administrative mechanisms to control and guard their mutual border, ambiguities of national identity constantly challenged the respective post-Partition nationalist projects. The border remained permeable with continuous legal and illegal movement of people and goods reflecting pragmatic and at times expedient negotiations between states’ agents and its liminal citizens.

Genesis of the Border a) Territorial Wrangling

Once the Indian political Parties accepted the decision to Partition, the next step was the constitution of a Boundary Commission to draw up the ‘real’ border. Mountbatten’s June 3rd

Plan had brought forward the Independence of India from the earlier date of July 1948 to August

15, 1947, which meant that Boundary Commission had less than six weeks to come up with a plan. The Boundary Commission with its four sub-continental members and a British Chairman,

Sir Cyril Radcliffe, was in line with the British aim to maintain the appearance of an arbitrator rather than a ruler, especially on the eve of decolonization. Radcliffe headed both the Bengal and

Punjab Boundary Commissions and had the deciding vote within each Commission.

In keeping with the rational judicial façade of the whole process, the members of the commission were all judges. The Bengal Boundary Commission thus consisted of well-known judges, B. K. Mukherjee, C. C. Biswas, Abu Muhammed and S. A. Rahman. 2 However,

2 The Punjab Commission consisted of Justices Mohammad, Munir, Mehar Chand Mahajan and Teja Singh. Radcliffe was the Chairman for both Boundary Commissions. After Partition, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Delhi: Government of India, 1948), 22-3.

76 the fact that the Congress and Muslim League nominated them, made it difficult to maintain impartiality once the deliberations begun. The appointment of Cyril Radcliffe was itself problematic. As Lucy Chester points out, “In agreeing to Radcliffe’s selection as chairman the

Muslim League and the Congress leaders seem to have taken a peculiar view that ignorance of

India could be taken as a guarantee for objectivity.”3 Radcliffe neither had local knowledge nor had any previous association with any kind of boundary making process. He was not objective either; Radcliffe’s main loyalty was to the British government and it impelled him not only to take up such a job but also to finish it as demanded despite chaotic conditions.4

The terms of reference for the Bengal Boundary Commission were simple enough; “to demarcate the boundaries on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims, and in doing so take into account also other factors.”5 Further, where a clear contiguous majority or minority became difficult to establish, the ‘other factors’ would assume primacy. What comprised the ‘other factors’ remained undefined, giving Radcliffe room for maneuver.6

The major political parties were required to submit depositions to the Boundary

Commission outlining their claims and suggestions on the border. For this purpose, the

Congress, Hindu Mahasabha, Indian Association and the New Bengal Association together formed a Central Boundary Coordination Committee with barrister Atul Chandra Gupta as

3Chester, Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary, 107.

4ibid. , 73-114.

5 N Mansergh, The Transfer of Power 1942-7 Vol. XII (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1977) Appendix 1, 488.

6 Pro-British writers argue that the Partition Council deliberately desisted from attempting to define specific considerations since there were too many issues to deliberate upon and they had little time. See Anthony Read and David Fisher, The Proudest Day: India’s Long Road to Independence (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1998), 483.

77 Chairman. In addition, each party also set up their own Boundary Committees which asked the public for their suggestions. Some like the New Bengal Association handed out questionnaires seeking facts and figures in justification for inclusion within India.7

A close examination of the claims put forward by the major political parties shows that the main issue at stake was not communal autonomy of either the Hindus or Muslims but territorial sovereignty.8 The demands to Partition Bengal in the earlier months had not clearly outlined where the line should be drawn. Further, the campaigns for Pakistan had tactically remained vague when it came to a territorial definition of the new state. So given less than six weeks to produce a geographical outline, the claims of both the Central Coordination Committee and the Muslim League reflect a scramble for territory, at times regardless of the basic terms of reference. In this respect, they made liberal use of the ‘other factors’ clause to demand areas which were non contiguous and to make a claim for Calcutta, the capital of undivided Bengal.

For the Muslim League, the demand for territory other than Muslim majority districts was based on two factors. First they insisted that that unit of partition should be either a union or more appropriately a subdivision9 which was “self-contained administrative unit”, rather than thanas, police stations, which were smaller units defining criminal jurisdictions.10 Such a method, League representatives claimed would yield a straighter and less complex boundary

7 HS, 25 June 1947, 3.

8 Joya Chatterji, “The Making of a Borderline: The Radcliffe Award for Bengal” in Ian Talbot and Gurharpal Singh ed. Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

9 In the colonial administrative structure, a Presidency or province was divided into a number of Divisions each comprising of a number of districts. Each district was again divided into a number of talukas or . Three to four talukas together constituted a subdivision.

10 Report of Justice Akram and Justice Rahman, Proceedings before the Bengal boundary Commission, 1947, WBSA, 1-26.

78 between the two states. Although such an argument had its merits, a division based on subdivisions would also give more territory to East Bengal.11

Second, the League insisted that the principle of contiguity should be limited to areas within Bengal. This meant that if an area were contiguous to other non-Muslim majority areas in

India but was not contiguous to any such areas within Bengal, and then it should automatically be assigned to East Bengal. Using such a definition, the League demanded that the non-Muslim majority districts of the Hill Tracts, Jalpaiguri, and Darjeeling belonged to the future

Pakistan. To bolster their claims on Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the League pointed out that these districts were the catchment areas of the Tista river system and control of this area was necessary for the ‘physical and economic health’ of East Bengal.

The League maintained that the city of Calcutta and its surrounding areas should be taken as one entity, and the decision to award it to either state should not be based on the fact that the city had an overwhelming non-Muslim population. Consequently, Calcutta as the economic and commercial center of the entire province of Bengal should go to East Bengal to ensure continuity in the linkages between the jute mills in the city and the jute producing hinterland in East Bengal.

Further, assigning Calcutta to east Bengal would not only balance the revenues in proportion to the population but also ensure that East Bengal was self-contained with its own ordinance factories, military installations and railway networks. Such arguments allowed the League to claim nearly four fifths of the territory of the Bengal province.12

11 Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, Proceedings before the Bengal boundary Commission, 1947, WBSA, 1-65. The non-Muslim members of the Boundary Commission pointed out that the census population figures were only available for the thanas and not for unions thus making it difficult to accede to the League definition.

12 Report of Justice Akram and Justice Rahman, 24-25.

79 For the Central Coordination Committee, the aim was not much different. S.N. Modak, the Chairman of the boundary committee of the New Bengal Association, “I may assure my country men, specially those residing in the border line districts that we are fully conscious of their anxiety and of the responsibility that has been placed on us. We shall leave no stone unturned in our effort to incorporate in the New Bengal province as many areas as we are reasonably entitled to.”13 To this end, the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, New Bengal

Association and Indian Association demanded, in addition to the non-Muslim majority districts of Burdwan, , Birbhum, , Howrah, Hoogly , , Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri, the two Muslim majority districts of Malda and . They also claimed some thanas in Jessore, Faridpur and Rajshahi on grounds that these areas had a numerical majority of schedule castes or the namasudras.14 Their demand would have included about 57 percent of the land for 46 percent of the population in West Bengal.

Atul Chandra Gupta, the chairman of the Coordination Committee, cautioned against such an extravagant demand. Instead, he proposed that the Coordination Committee should put forward two separate sets of plans to the Boundary Commission. The first, known as the

‘Congress Scheme’, outlined the actual claims of the Congress. The second plan known as the

‘Congress Plan’ was based strictly on contiguous majorities. Gupta argued that the actual

13 HS, 25 June 1947, 3.

14 The namasudras were one of two main scheduled caste groups in Bengal, the other being the rajbanshis. Known as Chandals of Bengal, they inhabited the mainly the eastern districts of Dacca, Bakrganj, Faridpur, Mymensingh, Jessore and Khulna. Sekhar Bandyopadhya has argued that in the context of Partition politics, ‘religion’ replaced ‘caste’ as the scheduled castes joined the Hindu nationalist groups to agitate for a Hindu homeland. For details see Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal, 1872- 1947 (Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997).

80 demands of the Scheme would easily be acceded once the Boundary Commission was made aware of the shortcomings of the second plan.15

In their Scheme, the Congress advocated two cardinal principles. First, Partition must be effected so that there may be as many non-Muslims as possible in West Bengal and similarly as many Muslims in East Bengal.16 Such distribution should also ensure that the proportion of

Muslims in East Bengal to the total Muslim population of the province should not be unduly lower or higher than the proportion of non-Muslims in West Bengal to the entire non-Muslim population of the province.

To achieve this goal, the Coordination Committee advocated the use of the thana as the basic unit of enumeration. Although more skillfully crafted than the proposal of the Muslim

League, the Congress demand also reflected a demand for territory. In addition to contiguity of non- Muslim areas, the Congress claimed the Muslim majority district of Murshidabad arguing that awarding the district to East Bengal would disrupt not only the Hoogly river system but also hamper the activities of the Port of Calcutta and hence the . They also insisted on the inclusion of the Sunderbans within West Bengal, claiming that it did not have any resident population. Since it was uninhabited, it should be attached to Khulna, a non-Muslim majority district that was contiguous to West Bengal. In the case of Murshidabad and the

Sunderbans the Congress concern for land and economic factors took priority over the basic terms of reference.17

15 Although the other parties in the Coordination Committee voted against such a complicated tactic, the Congress high command endorsed it and both plans were submitted to the Boundary Commission. For internal schisms within the Coordination Committee see Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning a Frontier”, 206.

16 Report of Justice Mukherjea and Justice Biswas, 3.

17 Ibid. , 34-35.

81 b) Popular Demands: Culture and Tradition in Danger

In the current historiography, the process of boundary making is described as a top down political and administrative process devoid of any inputs from the people themselves.18 However, this ignores the public dimension of the process where educated individuals hoped that their proposals would influence the outcome. Their suggestions provide us with crucial evidence on the formation of putative national identity that sought inclusion within specific imagined communities. Although there was no opportunity for them to present their individual cases directly to the Boundary Commission, concerned individuals could send their suggestions and requests to the major political groups. In fact, once the decision to Partition was announced, the

Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha set up district associations that invited representations with regard to the boundary from the general population. For instance, local representatives of the

Congress in the district of Khulna constituted a Boundary Consultative Committee to collect and present facts and figures before the Central Coordination Committee.19

Furthermore, the educated Bengali middle class voiced their concerns and suggestions in the public sphere through newspapers and by writing to their representatives. In most of these letters and opinion pieces, it was the religious identity of each community which was used as basic justification for inclusion within India or Pakistan. The primacy of religion was in keeping with the raison d'être of the Partition announcement, which demanded that people identify first and foremost as Hindus or Muslims. However, a close reading of their depositions show multiple concerns beyond religious identities, predicated on social and cultural ties.

18 Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier” and Willem Van Schendel, The Bengal Borderlands.

19 Also see Petition submitted by Magura Sammilani, People’s Association. HS, 26 June 1947, 3.

82 For instance, the non-Muslim population of Gournadi police station in Backerganj

District in East Bengal submitted a memorandum to the Lord Mountbatten, which detailed why their area should form a part of the Indian Union. The petition noted that Gournadi had fifty seven percent Hindus out of its total population making it a Hindu-majority area according to the requirements of the Boundary Commission. In addition, the memorandum highlighted Gournadi as an important seat of Hindu culture with the largest number of tols or village schools, and temples in the district. If such arguments failed to convince the British Government, the memorandum pointed out traditional social and economic ties with Calcutta and the intricate connections to the Gopalganj subdivision by “ties of marriage”.20 The demand here was not for the entire district of Backerganj, but only for the thana of Gournadi which according to the memorandum contiguous to the non-Muslim majority subdivision of Gopalganj.

In keeping with the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission, the aim was to find a neighboring area with non-Muslim majority and then demonstrate a case for contiguity. An editorial in the nationalist newspaper Hindustan Standard also appealed for the inclusion parts of

Faridpur and Backerganj even though they did not “pass the strict test of contiguousness” since this area in West Bengal would provide a natural boundary of the river Padma between the two

Bengals. Further, the editorial urged the need for at least half the territory of the Bengal for the new province of west Bengal because “it seems certain that sooner or later the Hindus of East

Bengal will have to be accommodated in West Bengal and provided with honest means of livelihood.”21

20 Ibid. , 7.

21 HS, 11 July 1947, 4.

83 This claim was echoed at the national level. Some members of the Constituent Assembly such as M.N. Mahalonobis and Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra jointly published a statement where they demanded that not less than half of the area and population of Bengal be placed within the West Bengal cum north Bengal province. “This demand …is modest in view of the size of non-Muslim population and the property owned by it. Every effort should also be made to include within the province the most important places of Hindu pilgrimage and the seats of

Hindu religion and culture.”22 Concerns about Hindu culture were one of the key factors interweaving public demands of inclusion within India. For Tinkari Bagchi, the Commissioner of

Nabadwip Municipality, a center of the Vaishnava sect, it was imperative that his district of

Nadia be awarded to India. He elucidated that,

Apart from the fact that the two most important subdivisions (in the district) namely the Sadar and being Hindu majority areas, and Santipur are the two famous historic towns which have for several centuries been the seat of Hindu learning and culture. 23

Like Bagchi, many felt that the continuation of their cultural traditions would be disrupted with the border which “was not the demarcation between two provincial units under one constituted authority” as had been the case in the Partition of 1905, but “a clear cut line between two independent sovereign states, viz. the Indian Union and Eastern Pakistan.” Inclusion of their area within India would ensure the preservation of their religion and cultural traditions.

Joya Chatterji has argued that these demands for inclusion and concern about Hindu culture are indicative and constitutive of a widespread Hindu communal movement demanding

22 Statement by Dr. P. N. Bannerjee, former leader of the Nationalist Party, Pandit L K Maitra M N Mahalonobis, P R , B C Mukherjee, ‘Hindu Bengal: Question of Determining Right Boundary,’ HS, 7 June 1947, 4.

23 Tinkari Bagchi, Letter to the Editor, HS, 12 July 1947, 4.

84 territory for a ‘Hindu homeland.’24 The Hindu Mahasabha was the key mobilizing force demanding division of the province. Such mobilizing efforts were not confined to the middle class, but encompassed a substantial portion of the scheduled castes in Bengal, who on the eve of

Partition identified themselves as part of the Hindu minority.25 These scholars also contend that the Bengali Hindu demands of inclusion within India on the eve of Partition are indicative of the fact that religious identity had transcended the cultural linguistic boundaries and evolved a broader spatial association.

However, such arguments fail to highlight the contingency of political negotiations, which influenced Bengali public opinion in 1946-47 and the dynamic shifts in position within public discourse. Further, the concept of Pakistan remained non-hegemonic when it came to the

Bengali Hindus as Muslim League propaganda in the 1940s alternated between the vague territoriality and the specificity of the Pakistan idea as land for the Muslims. Partitioned India with its claims of inclusion of all communities irrespective of religion may have seemed a familiar extension of the earlier imagined political community. Demands of inclusion and its corresponding spatial definitions have to be placed within such historical contingencies.

c) Reactions to Boundary Award

The Boundary Commission announced its award on August 17th 1947, two days after the declaration of independence. Although the award was ready by August 12th, Mountbatten, fearing civil strife, had arranged for its publication only after the British had relinquished constitutional control over India. The award assigned 36.36 percent of land to accommodate

24 Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided.

25 Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Caste, Protest and Identity.

85 35.14 percent of population to West Bengal, while East Bengal received 63.6 percent of land to accommodate 64.85 percent of the population. The two states had an equal proportion of majority and minority populations in a ratio of approximately 70: 30. However, the award was inequitable in its distribution of the minority population within each area as West Bengal contained 16 percent of the total Muslim population of Bengal while East Bengal retained 42 percent of the total non-Muslims of undivided Bengal.26

The boundary line divided the five districts of Nadia, Jessore, Dinajpur, Jalpaiguri and

Malda.27 The Boundary Commission acceded to the Congress argument regarding Murshidabad being crucial to the survival of the Hoogly river system and assigned it to West Bengal. Khulna, which had been included in West Bengal under the provisional boundary, was granted to East

Bengal. Subsequent vociferous protests against the award fueled the belief that the district had been exchanged for Murshidabad. The Radcliffe award failed to meet people’s expectations.28

At the official level the division did not resemble what either the Congress and the

Muslim League had proposed to the Boundary Commission. At a popular level the Award initiated confusion and a sense of betrayal among Hindus and Muslims. N. C. Chatterjee, a prominent member of the Bengal Provincial Hindu Mahasabha, protested against the award by describing it as “an outrage on the principle of self determination and all canons of political morality” and it had “ignored the cultural and economic needs” of the people of Bengal.”29

26 After Partition, 31.

27 See Appendix 1. (c) of this dissertation.

28 Press comments after the announcement ranged from “ A departing kick of British imperialism” (Amrita Bazar Patrika), “Self Contradictory” (Hindustan Standard), “Territorial Murder” (The Dawn). Reported in D. F. Ebright, Free India: The First Five Years (Nashville: Parthenon Press, 1954), 25.

29 Speech by N. C. Chatterjee, a prominent Hindu Mahasabhite, at University Institute Hall, reported in HS, 24 , 4.

86 Bengalis sent telegrams and letters to various political leaders and British officials requesting that the boundary be revised so that their respective areas would then be included on the ‘right’ side of the border. For instance, Sarat Das, a member of the Khulna District Congress

Boundary Committee, sent telegrams to the Clement Atlee, the British Prime Minister, and to

Lord Addison, Secretary of Common Wealth Relations, and even to George VI declaring that the boundary award was “unsatisfactory, unreasonable, objectionable, inconsistent, arbitrary, illegal, absurd, ultravires, unconstitutional” and needed immediate rectification.30 Such petitions sent to British officials as late as October 1948 reflect not only a continuing association with

British rule on the part of the senders, but also a faith in the “prayer and ‘petition” methods of the moderate nationalists of earlier decades to redress grievances against colonial rule. Similarly, representative Muslim groups such as the Muslim National Guards of Pabna were upset that the award did not include more of Bengal in Pakistan.31

The case of Khulna, a Hindu majority province awarded to Pakistan, and Murshidabad, a

Muslim majority province awarded to India, captured the betrayal that the general population felt with the announcement of the award. Citizens of Khulna declared that they had been sacrificed at the altar of division and been exchanged for Murshidabad. While the Khulna Congress representatives petitioned the Congress High Command that their district be included in the

Indian union even if it meant an exchange with Murshidabad, local Hindu leaders of

Murshidabad appealed against such a potential exchange and accused the Khulna Hindus of

30 Telegrams postmarked 18, 23, and 26 August 1947, and 6 October 1948, File: L/P&J/7/12465 9920, Boundary Commissions of Punjab and Bengal: Petitions, Memoranda, Telegrams, and Protests, Aug 1947-Oct 1948, OIOC, London.

31Ibid. , Telegram postmarked 26 August 1947. Other Muslim groups like the District Muslim Welfare Society of Noakhali also sent petitions urging a change in the award. Telegram postmarked 26 Aug 1947.

87 being selfish.32 The Boundary Award had divided not only Hindus and Muslims but also members within a single community.

People interpreted Mountbatten’s June 3rd Plan in different ways. Although leading newspapers carried the details of the provisional plan to partition, the public had little understanding of how it would translate into reality. The Award was to follow the principle of contiguous majority areas but it was not the only consideration for the division. The general public was unaware of the specifics of these other considerations until after the award was announced. Thus the local Muslim League in Malda, which had several Muslim majority thanas, had hoisted the Pakistan flag on 15 August only to find that most of Malda had in fact been awarded to India.33 Similarly Hindus in Khulna had hoisted the Indian flag in anticipation of inclusion within India.34

The confusion that engulfed the people of Bengal on the eve of Partition is aptly portrayed in Satinath Bhaduri’s ‘The Champion of the People.’35 Situated in a small village on the border between Purnea and Dinajpur, in north Bengal, the villagers in the story did not know whether they were part of India or Pakistan. The narrative begins with Munimji, the local black marketer announcing that the village of Titlia, would be awarded to Hindustan and

Mirpur to Pakistan. Pora Gossain, the leader and priest of the rajbanshis36 of Titlia is elated at

32 Letter from Ramgopal Banerjea to Acharya Kripalani, dated 10 September 1947, File: G 33/1947, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

33 Telegram postmarked 23 Aug 1947, Petitions, Memoranda and Telegrams and Protests.

34 Ibid. , Telegram postmarked 22 August 1947.

35 Satinath Bhaduri, “Gananayak” (The Champion of the People) in Manabendra Bandyapadhya ed. Bhed-Bhibed, 108-125. Reproduced and Translated in Alok Bhalla, ed. Stories about the Partition of India Vol. I (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 1999).

36 The rajbanshis or koch are a caste group of the state forming 60 percent of the total population. Imperial Gazetteer of India, Provincial Series, Bengal Vol. 2 (Calcutta: Usha Publishers, 1984), 431.

88 such news and so is Achchimaddi, a Muslim resident of Mirpur. Shortly after Munimji’s declaration, the villagers, who had hitherto maintained peaceful co-existence, put up the

Congress and League flags in Titlia and Mirpur respectively. Hindu refugees from Mirpur leave their hearth and home and set up camp on the other side. However, when the Boundary Award is finally published, the residents of Titlia found that their area had been awarded to Pakistan. For

Pora Gossain, being a part of Pakistan means that “I am going to be buried when I die. They won’t even let me go to the temple.” Similarly for Achimaddi, Indian citizenship means, “we will be forced to pray facing east, and they won’t let us kill chicken.” 37 For both characters, the main concern was culture and their spatial identification of the imagined nation of India and

Pakistan. The story ends with Munimji making the maximum financial gain from the confusion.

Both Bengali Hindus and Muslims caught in areas where they were a minority felt betrayed and pleaded with respective leaders to be included with their majority brethren on the other side of the border. They continued to evoke cultural and economic ties as reasons for inclusion. The ‘other factor’ clause in the Mountbatten plan was now key to such arguments. The

Hindus of Khulna petitioned Lord Listowel, the last Secretary of State for India in London, for inclusion to India on grounds that the district included important Hindus religious sites that needed protection.38 A memorandum from the Hindu residents of the thanas of Porsa, Patnitola and Damurhat in Dinajpur urged the Boundary Subcommittee to include them within the Indian

Union even though they were part of a Muslim majority area. They contended, “It is the economic incongruities of a boundary demarcation based on purely communal issue which should be the subject matter of negotiations for an agreed revision of boundaries between the

37 Bhaduri, “The Champion of the People,” 270-71.

38 Telegram postmarked 23 Aug 1947, Petitions, Memoranda and Telegrams and Protests.

89 authorities of two .”39 The memorandum elaborated on the various economic difficulties that would befall the residents of these areas under the present line of demarcation.

Border disputes where the line went through common water bodies and severance of the trading center of Nitpur in India from the growing hinterland in Pakistan areas were a few of the projected grievances of the people in these thanas. The memorandum also underlined the sacrifices of the residents in the national struggle for Indian independence if their arguments for economic contiguity failed to convince authorities to redraw the boundary.40

Delimiting the Nation a) Locating of the border

Although contemporary texts on boundary making warned against relying solely on maps and advocated supplementary field surveys, the Boundary Commission had no time to undertake such measures.41 District administrators who had intensive local knowledge never had the opportunity to provide any input. Colonial district maps aided the deliberations of the

Commission. In addition to maps, the Boundary Commission also depended on the controversial

1941 census to locate and divide the population according to majority/minority communities.42

The Congress representatives to the Commission argued that the 1941 census had been conducted at a time when political power and representation depended on an increase in

39 Memorandum dated 12 Sep 1947, File # G 33/1947, AICC papers, NMML, New Delhi.

40 Ibid.

41 Stephen B Jones, Boundary Making: A Handbook for Statesmen, Treaty Editors and Boundary Commissioners, Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1945.

42 The Muslim League defended this census as authoritative. Lucy Chester, Drawing the Indo-Pakistani Boundary, 70-71.

90 numbers. So they claimed that the Muslims had deliberately skewed the census in their favor bending administrative boundaries to show more Muslim majority areas.

Although the Boundary Award for Bengal seemed precise and detailed on paper, in reality, people had little idea of its actual delineations. Further, the parameters by which the

Boundary Commission operated was bound to create confusion and border disputes between

India and East Pakistan. By 1953, about 3,500 kilometers of the border remained undemarcated, and by 1965, 1500 kilometers had yet to be settled.43 Even as late as 2004, certain parts are yet to be surveyed, and India and Bangladesh have inherited the legacy of disputes, which began with the 1947 Partition. Such disputes continue due to the non-availability of maps as in the case of the Dumabari sector in the - border.44 In cases where old maps are available, the disputes center on the validity of these maps that do not take into consideration ecological changes such as shifts in the course of rivers.45

When he drafted the boundary, Radcliffe based it upon pre-existing administrative boundaries between thanas and districts. However, realities on site were very different from mapping the border on paper. The boundaries between districts were not always physically defined and one had to consult out of date survey and settlement maps to determine the actual lines of demarcation. As one astute Indian police official remarked,

There is nothing to demarcate the boundary line except an imaginary one supported by settlement maps showing the border of villages. In the event of encroachment the matter

43Van Schendel, “Working through Partition,” 402.

44 The Dumabari sector was part of the Sylhet revenue district, now in Bangladesh. Both India and Pakistan insist that the maps are with the other country. Naunidhi Kaur, “The Dividing Line”, Frontline, 18, no.10 (May 12 - 25, 2001), http://www.flonnet.com/fl1810/18100270.htm

45 Ibid. A section of the Tripura-Noakhali border lies along the , which is known to have changed its course. While Bangladesh insists on using the survey maps of 1893 which would then give it 44 acres more than it would have if the boundary follows the current course of the river. India insists on using the river course as it was during the Partition and as agreed upon later in 1974.

91 will remain disputed until it is amicably settled by both dominions or decided by a court of law by reference to the Settlement documents which may or may not be accepted by both dominions46

Radcliffe also used natural features such as rivers as boundaries. However, these rivers by changing their course over time led to confusion amongst border dwellers and border officials alike. Again some of these rivers were perennial and would remain dry except during monsoons when they would flood their banks obscuring the borderline completely. The Mathabhanga, which formed the border for the northwestern part of Nadia, India, illustrates the confusions that arose out of such ecological issues. The dated Bengal Government Press map that Radcliffe had consulted did not chart the new course for the river Mathabhanga that formed a crucial part of the new border.47 Consequently, almost 500 sq. miles of territory went to Pakistan instead of

India.48 Organizations such as the New Bengal Association, took up this particular issue in their demands for boundary readjustments in the post Partition period.

Radcliffe’s use of rivers as boundary lines created other problems. In April of 1957, the

District Magistrate of 24 Parganas reported some Pakistani policemen had seized a country boat belonging to an Indian national and loaded with grocery goods when it was plying along the midstream of the river Ichamati49. Although this incident seemed similar to other cases of trespassing into Indian and East Pakistani territory, what made this one of particular significance

46 Inspector’s Report on Border Intelligence of , dated 23 April 1948, File no. 1238-47, Government of Bengal Intelligence Branch (Nabadwip) Quoted in Joya Chatterji, “Fashioning of a Frontier” 221.

47 Although Radcliffe used a map prepared by the Bengal Drawing Office in 1944, the map itself was drawn on the basis of a Survey in the year 1915-16. Decisions of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal, 1949, Government of India, 1958, 19.

48 Letter dated 11 September 1947 from Secretary, New Bengal Association, Mehrpur, and Nadia to Acharya Kripalani. This issue was resolved with the Algot Bagge Award of 1950 where the starting point of the river was fixed at a point in the south west of River. File: G-33/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.

49 Secret Fortnightly report of first half of April 1957, Reports and Returns: Fortnightly reports of West Bengal- 1957, File: 4/2/57-Poll-II, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1957, National Archives of India, New Delhi (henceforth NAI).

92 was the fact that only parts of the river Ichamati fell in Pakistan territory.50 The authorities of both dominions decided that the entire width of the navigable river between and

Bhatchhala would be unused by the boatmen of both sides in the interest of border peace and

Indo-Pakistani trade.

The new border was ecologically challenged due to chars, alluvial plains that existed in the middle of large rivers like the Ganges and the Padma. The , which divided

Murshidabad, India from Rajshahi, Pakistan, was dotted with chars which at times were large enough to have entire villages built upon them. Immediately after Partition, the alleged East

Pakistani ‘occupation’ of Char Sarandaspur, one of the biggest char areas on the Padma, provided the background for the deployment of military forces of India and Pakistan at the border.51 Inter dominion talks at the highest official level managed to diffuse the situation and both countries agreed to treat this area as no man’s land, and withdraw their armed forces five miles away from the Char.

However, such claims to national territory became part of routine border disputes in the subsequent years. After the monsoons of 1957, some Pakistani nationals and policemen attempted to take possession of new char lands that had appeared on the other side Murshidabad

Rajshahi border, claiming them to be Pakistani territory.52 The issue was resolved with the agreement that Pakistan would stop sending patrols to the disputed area and the Indian patrol party would not cross the river just below the disputed char.

50 Ibid. The report pointed out that “the main stream of the river between Sodepur in the Indian union and Bhatchhala in East Pakistan passes through Pakistani territory at the time of the ebb-tide due to the formation of a char near the Sodepur side of the river and that during ebb tide all river craft plying in the river have to go along midstream on the Pakistan side.”

51HS, 1 January 1948,1.

52Secret Fortnightly report of first half of November 1957, Reports and Returns.

93 The disputes over the char lands cropped up not only in terms of boundary demarcation but also in terms of territorial sovereignty as expressed in the right to tax the char inhabitants.

When news reached Indian authorities that East Pakistani officials were carrying out unilateral surveys of villages within the boundaries of and detaining crops grown by

Indian cultivators on their own char lands, the Indian government decided to take over the rent collection and khas mahal (Government owned land) management of these chars immediately.53

In addition the inhabitants were informed by the beat of drums that char lands were part of

Murshidabad, and the producers were free to bring back their paddy “by any means within their power and that if they do not assert their rights we [Indian government] shall not be responsible for their starvation.”54 Since most of the inhabitants in this border region were Muslims, such statements called onto them to prove their loyalty by resisting the Pakistani authorities. Willem

Van Schendel argues that India and Pakistan in the post Partition period developed trans- territorial nationalisms where both states saw themselves not only in charge of their own citizens but also of a group of citizens still residing in the other dominion. Thus Muslims in Pakistan were citizens in that country but Muslims in India were proxy citizens of Pakistan. The question of loyalty of these proxy citizens was central to creation of national identity.55

National identity was one of the key issues at the border. The Lalbag Mahakuma

Rashtriya Samiti (Lalbag National Union Association), Murshidabad wrote to ask Premier

Jawaharlal Nehru to define the boundary demarcations for char Sarandaspur, Bhasgara and the char lands of Jangipur sub division and officially to declare them to be part of the Indian Union.

53 Radiogram dated 27.7.48 (draft) to East Bengal from West Bengal, File: P184/48, Home Police Confidential Records, Government of West Bengal (GOWB), 1948.

54 Ibid. Letter to BK Acharya, Addl. Dy Secy to GOWB Home, from AS Roy, Camp Nimtita PS Suti, dated 22.7.48.

55 Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia.”127. For elaboration on the question of loyalty, see Chapter 4.

94 Their letter emphasized that they had been actively agitating for inclusion within India, and thereby, had incurred the displeasure of East Pakistan. Unless and until Nehru took steps to right the wrongs done to them, these inhabitants could not return to their land without fear.56 Implicit in the above demands of boundary readjustments were demands of citizenship and national identity and government protection.

Demands for boundary re-adjustment, along with concurrent inter dominion border disputes led to the formation of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal in December

1949. Headed by Algot Bagge, member of the Supreme Court of Sweden, this tribunal adjudicated on the actual location of the boundary where the Ganges acted as the border. The

Radcliffe award had stated that “the line shall then turn south east down the river Ganges along the boundary between the districts of Malda and Murshidabad; Rajshahi and Nadia; to the point in the north western corner of the district of Nadia where the channel of the river Mathabhanga takes off from the river Ganges.”57 The Pakistani member of the tribunal, Justice M. Shahauddin, judge on the Dacca High Court, interpreted this to mean that the border would be a fluid one, shifting with the course of the river. The Indian member, N. Chandrashekhara Aiyer who was a retired judge of the Madras High Court, however pointed out that the Radcliffe award also clearly stated, “the district boundaries and not the actual course of the river Ganges shall constitute the boundary between East and West Bengal.” Thus Aiyar noted that Radcliffe had intended the boundary to be a permanent, fixed line.

56 Letter dated 15th March 1948 from Jitendranath Roy to J Nehru, File: 12-12/48, Pak I: Ministry of External Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.

57 Decisions of the Indo Pakistan Boundary Disputes Tribunal, 19. The tribunal also deliberated on boundary disputes between East Bengal and Assam.

95 Like the Boundary Commission before it, the decision on the boundary was ultimately left in the hands of the chairman. Justice Bagge agreed with Aiyar and announced that the boundary should be the fixed along the district boundary line of Murshidabad and Rajshahi. The

Bagge Award was not the end of the story but just the beginning as subsequent years witnessed a number of negotiations and transfer of territories across the between India and Pakistan.58 Border disputes and claims of territory continue to be a regular feature of national life in both countries.

b) National Identity at the Periphery

For those living on the borderland, the new boundary disrupted their daily economic activities for decades after the Partition and criminalized routine occupations. As a zone of continuing transnational linkages, this border presented both states with problems of securing and maintaining the border from ‘infiltrators’. Often such security concerns would translate into cases of harassment by state agents at the border.

In March 1957, Indian authorities noted,

Five Pakistani armed policemen of Rajshahi district trespassed into our (Indian) territory at Harirampur in police station Kaliachak of and kidnapped one of our nationals who had gone there to sell eggs. He was assaulted and case and other articles were snatched away from him.59

Officials of both India and Pakistan were prone to investigate such border crossings, whether to attend the weekly market, cultivate paddy or visit family on the other side as potential anti- national activity. Dr. Gaur Chandra Ray of Fulbari, India illustrates how the border created barriers in the pursuit of one’s occupation. Dr. Ray resided in India while his dispensary fell in

58 The Indo- Pakistan Agreement of 10 September 1958, awarded portions of Beruabari Union to East Pakistan, and came to an agreement on the exchange of the Coochbehar enclaves. For details on the enclaves along the India East Pakistan Border, see, Willem Van Schendel, “Stateless in South Asia.”

59 Secret Fortnightly report of second half of March 1957, Reports and Returns, NAI.

96 Kushtia, Pakistan. On 12 March 1948, while returning home with some medicines, two constables of Kazipur Police camp arrested him and robbed him of his belongings. He was ultimately released upon payment of bail of Rs. 2000.60

More frequently, the border severed villages from the markets that served them, forcing villagers of one dominion to cross the border to access items for their daily use. At times, going to the market could be construed as anti national which happened with some villagers at the

Sylhet border. At a public meeting, the local Muslim League passed a resolution that condemned the situation in which the villagers had to travel across the international border to the local bazaar at to purchase pan (betel leaf), orange pineapple, rice saplings and consequently to face harassment from the Indian border officials61. Again the Government of India heavily taxed the shopkeepers from Pakistan area. The resolution cited the case of Ali, a tea stall owner, who had been arrested by the Indian police on the accusation that he was a Pakistani spy. In response and as a solution, a local bazaar at Tambil was started and the Additional District Magistrate of

Sylhet ordered the villagers from the Pakistani not to go to the Dawki bazaar.

However, the problem again arose when the official order was cancelled and people started frequenting the other bazaar across the border. In another instance, Kalu Muhammad

Chaudhuri, a potato dealer from Jagirpara, Dinajpur (Pakistan) had given the Pakistan Police and

Muslim National Guards Rs. 15 to be allowed to cross to the Sarbamangla Hut in India.62 The routine exercise of going to the market had now assumed international and national significance.

60 Incident on March 12, 1948, File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, Bangladesh National Archives (henceforth BNA).

61 Resolution dated 3 April 1948, File: 5M-4/1948, Home Political B Proceedings 402 -408, July 1949 BNA.

62 Incident on 24 March 1948, File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, BNA.

97 The border dwellers developed ways and means to get around state mechanisms for controlling their movement either by bribing officials or moving their goods clandestinely.

Because of the border’s physical as well as administrative distance from the central authorities, official opinion within the Indian Government often suspected citizens in this region of their loyalty to the nation. Such suspicion was fuelled by fears of loss of territory due to the settlement of Muslims from East Pakistan. Muslim citizens of India in these border areas, who continued to maintain ties with his/her kith and kin across the border, became the primary surveillance targets for state intelligence officials. The severe food and unemployment crisis in

East Pakistan induced a number of Muslim citizens, along with the Hindu minorities, to make use of such ties and seek food and shelter in India. When B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of West

Bengal observed in 1948 that a large number of Muslims were entering the border districts of the state, he claimed that such migration might be for economic reasons or for social visits. Still, he added that these Muslims might be “deliberately infiltrating into this province to act as fifth columnists in an emergency.” Given the volatile situation in Kashmir and Hyderabad, he feared that “these immigrants might well turn out to be a great source of danger.” 63

Roy was not alone in his concern about “unauthorized Muslim immigrants.” In fact, several high level officials including , the then , alleged that the East

Pakistan government had taken steps “to eliminate all Hindus from a depth of about 10 miles from the (East Pakistani) border.”64 In addition, intelligence reports noted that there was a

“deliberate movement to import Pakistani Muslims and settle them in the (Indian) border areas

63 No File Number, Conference of District Magistrates held at Calcutta West Bengal, Home Political (Secret), September 1948, WBSA.

64 File: JDM 868/49, Home Political (Secret), 1949, WBSA, 3. A high level official meeting took place on 4 November 1949 in on the subject of restricting immigration of persons from East Bengal to Assam. Participants included N. Gopalaswami Ayyengar, Sri Prakash, Governor of Assam, B C Roy, Chief Minister of West Bengal, G N Bardoloi, Chief Minister of Assam, Sukumar Sen, Chief Secretary of West Bengal and others.

98 in that the Muslim preponderance here might, later on, be urged as a ground for annexing these areas to Pakistan.” As preventive measures, the West Bengal government often externed those

Muslims who, they felt, had deliberately encouraged the immigration of Muslim from East

Bengal. Further, in some cases where Muslims had transferred land to Muslim newcomers from the east, the West Bengal government had requisitioned the land for the purposes of resettling refugees (Hindu) from East Bengal.65

Such allegations were often directed towards the seasonal migration of Muslim laborers from East Pakistan who usually crossed the border to work on the paddy and jute fields or the tea gardens of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri. The West Bengal government’s policy with regard to such migration was clear. As long as the border crossers were casual laborers who entered India for work and then returned home to East Pakistan after a certain period of time, the government did not challenge them. However, it became a security issue if these laborers decided to settle on the

Indian side. The case of some Pakistani Muslim laborers working in tea gardens owned by one

Janab () Musharraf Hussain illustrates the complexities of such fears. Trouble started when the Deputy Commissioner of Jalpaiguri, a border district where Musharraf Hussain owned four tea gardens, found that the latter was ostensibly “importing” Pakistani Muslims under the guise of casual laborers and settling them in vacant land in his estates.66 Although the officials acknowledged that even in pre-Partition days, tea garden laborers tended to settle in the areas they worked in, such a practice could not now be “viewed with complacence.” When Musharraf

Hussain protested to higher authorities in Calcutta and Delhi, claiming that such a curb on

65 Ibid., 3.

66 No file number, Proceedings of the Conference on Influx of Pakistani Muslims held at the Cabinet Room, 12 September 1949, Home Political (Secret), WBSA. Conference members included the Chief Secretary, Home Secretary, Inspector General of Police, and the district magistrates and sub divisional officers of the border districts of West Bengal.

99 recruitment would affect the production of tea, the West Bengal government pointed out the easy availability of Indian laborers from Bihar who worked in the tea gardens in high numbers and

“who can be depended upon to be loyal to the state.”67 The Indian government made it clear that the “question of security in the area is however vitally involved…and vastly outweigh the alleged interests of production of a little more tea.” 68

Concern over the migration of Muslim citizens from East Pakistan into West Bengal and

Assam continued influence the Indian government’s policies on border issues and the granting of citizenship rights.69 Even when it became clear that the Muslim migrants rather occupying vacant lands and claiming ownership were more likely to be absorbed within the labor force and existing kinship networks, the Government of India remained suspicious of their intentions.70 In

1950, the Assam government passed an ordinance to order the removal of any persons who was deemed to have come to the state from outside of India and “whose stay in the State is detrimental to the interests of India.”71 Sure enough, this ordinance targeted only Muslim emigrants and its discretionary powers were exercised towards the Hindu emigrants from East

Pakistan. This controversial ordinance aimed to remove all those who had come before or after the ruling, and was soon embroiled in the ongoing politics of the state.

67 Sukumar Sen, Letter to CC Desai, dated 6 September 1949, ibid. , 5.

68 Ibid. , 4.

69 In the first session of the Parliament in 1950, Gopalswami Ayengar, the minister for Transport and Railways in the Central government admitted “nearly four and half lakhs of Muslims have entered into the state of Assam alone between 15 August 19 and beginning of November 1949.” Parliamentary Debates Official Report (Questions and Answers) Part 1, 1 February 1950 – 13 March 1950 (GOI, 1958), 20.

70 In answering a query by parliamentarian B S Man, on whether Muslim emigrants from East Pakistan had occupied any lands, Gopalswami Ayengar replied that “ There is no particular part of territory which these people have occupied….they have come in driblets, and nothing like an invasion across the border all along the line has taken place.” Ibid., 20.

71 Ayengar, ibid.

100 The Partition created a borderland within a territory whose inhabitants had hitherto been residing in the heartland of Bengal and had little contact with the state machinery.

Almost overnight neighbors had become citizens of different nations, and their respective governments expected the border to determine who would be co- citizens and who should be regarded as foreigners. Although they were at the periphery of the nation, their existence in the eyes of each government was hardly liminal.

Controlling the Border

a) Policing the economic frontier

Initially, the border was supposed to define only the political line of division between

India and Pakistan. The Standstill Agreement, concluded before the Partition, sought to ensure that there was no disruption in trade and flow of goods from one region to the other.72 Such a policy of free trade stipulated that the two Dominions should not establish any customs barriers or impose prohibitory excise taxes on goods before they agreed on long term trade policies with each other. There were also no restrictions imposed on the movement of people across borders immediately after Partition. In an effort to normalize the post- Partition communal situation and to prevent the hurried migration of refugees, official policy allowed Bengalis, both Hindus and

Muslims, to retain their to land on either side of the border. At the Inter-Dominion

Conference in Calcutta in April, 1948, Jawaharlal Nehru, , and Liaqat Ali

Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, agreed to set up Evacuee Management Boards on both

72 “The complementary nature of the economies of the two Dominions therefore renders it necessary that, pending the negotiations of long term agreements, steps should be taken by both Governments to ensure that supplies of goods are distributed throughout the two Dominions more or less as they are at present when they form part of a single state.” Report on Standstill Agreement with Pakistan, in S. L. Poplai ed. India1947-50, Select Documents on Asian Affairs, Vol. II (External Affairs) (New York: Oxford University Press, 1970), 124.

101 sides of the Bengal border to safeguard evacuee property until the rightful owners returned to claim them.73 Officials hoped that the migration of minorities was a temporary phenomenon and thus sought to ensure their free movement across the border. Both governments allowed their respective citizens to cross the Radcliffe Line to conduct their economic and personal business on the other side. In February 1948, representatives of East and West Bengal agreed to “allow nationals of one state to move the produce of his land lying in another state in the border areas.”74 Such a policy meant that the Bengal border was a political frontier, and citizenship had yet to be defined in terms of residence and property ownership. Initially, people living at the border exercised these rights guaranteed to them. For instance, many agricultural laborers from

Pakistan crossed over to Malda, India during harvesting season, and returned after their work was done.75 Immediately after Partition, official policy thus tried ensuring that there was little disruption in the lives of people living at the borderlands.

However, it was difficult to translate this official policy of a peaceful but porous border into practice. With the expiry of the Standstill Agreement in February 1948, the Indian and

Pakistani governments declared that they would regulate all trade between the two countries. To this effect, both countries set up departments such as Customs and Excise, providing employment opportunities at the border railway stations. The Indian government set up 39 land customs offices on the Bengal border and 22 on the Assam border with East Pakistan.76 By 1949,

Pakistan had increased the number of border outposts on the North Bengal border from 85 to

73No file number, Proceedings of the Inter-Dominion Conference held at Calcutta, 15-18 April 1948, Home Political (Secret) 1948, WBSA.

74 File: 62/1948, Conference of Representatives of the Governments of East Bengal and West Bengal at Dacca on the 14th of February, 1948, Home Political (Secret), 1948, WBSA.

75 Conference of District Magistrates of West Bengal, WBSA.

76 Editorial, HS, 6 March 1948, 4.

102 162.77 The Standstill Agreement had cautioned against placing land customs barriers on a border that had no natural boundary lines and had yet to be actually demarcated in certain parts. Further, it had noted that it would be a difficult task to employ and train staff required to prevent smuggling across a border that was 1350 miles long and traversed with innumerable waterways, railways and roads. However, the new nation states did not heed such warnings and declared that for the purpose of customs taxes, the other country would be considered “foreign” territory. The imposition of customs barrier had the immediate effect of creating confusion among traders, especially those who dealt in perishable items such as fish, eggs, milk and . The

Sealdah Fish Aratdars Association made a representation to the local customs authorities on the enormous difficulties experienced by the fish trade due to customs barriers.78 Calcutta, one of the main clearing centers, usually received more than half of the fish from East Pakistan. In addition to customs barriers, the requisite permits for export licenses, which could only be issued from

Delhi, compounded the problem. Such a lengthy process meant that the fish and other perishable items languished at train stations. In an effort to solve the problem, the Indian government quickly declared the perishable items exempt from customs duties.

The change from a policy of free trade to one of regulation made the Radcliffe Line an economic frontier zone that classified traditional economic activities into legal and illegal. Such regulations contradicted with the policy of allowing borderland citizens to continue to buy and sell essential items across the border. The establishment of border outposts and land customs barriers ostensibly brought the state’s presence to the periphery. However the state could not

77Van Schendel, “Working Through Partition.” 408.

78HS, 5 March 1948, 3.

103 inspire or ensure loyalty among the customs officials and border militias who often ended up harassing border crossers for pecuniary gains to supplement their meager incomes.

The peculiarities of the border in certain places also made things difficult for the agricultural wage laborers. One April 25, 1948, the West Bengal police fired upon some wage laborers of Rajshahi, in East Pakistan when they crossed the border to cut paddy in a piece of char land which was under the criminal jurisdiction of Murshidabad, but its khasmahal or revenue management was being carried on by the Rajshahi collectorate. Government Press reports outlined the ongoing dispute over territorial jurisdiction and accused each other of illegal actions.79

Given conflicting policies of both governments, the border officials had considerable latitude to apply their own judgment in specific cases. In fact, the Government of West Bengal

“desired the District officers to use their discretion and expected that they would use such discretion with imagination and tact.”80 However, border officials were usually harsh in dealing with border crossers, sometimes using harassment as a means to personal gains. When Murari

Mohan Dey and Amulya Chandra Dutta were transporting two boats loaded with bell metal utensils from Nawabganj, Pakistan to Malda, India from the 16 to the 18 March 1948, Pakistani military patrolmen arrested them despite of the fact that they had a legal government permit to export their merchandise. They and their goods were released only after they paid Rs. 500 to the commander of the patrol station.81 Some cobblers from West Bengal who went to Pakistan to work had a worse fate waiting for them as they attempted to return home on 4 April, 1948. First

79HS, 1 May 1948, 7. The East Bengal government’s Press note on the incident appeared in the Indian newspapers later. See HS, 20 May1948, 2.

80 Conference of District Magistrates of West Bengal, WBSA.

81Report dated 24 March 1948 File: 1I-45/48, Home Political B Proceedings 216-217, August 1949, BNA.

104 the Pakistan border police arrested them and released them only after receiving a bribe. Then the

Muslim National Guards arrested them again and demanded another bribe.82 In order to stop such harassment, the Nehru-Liaquat Ali Pact of 1950 stated, “ There shall be no harassment by the Customs authorities. At each Customs post agreed upon by the governments concerned liaison officers shall be posted to ensure this in practice.”83 Thus Indian liaison officials would be responsible for the Hindu minority residents of Pakistan and vice versa for Pakistan officials.

Concern for minority citizens of the other country was a key feature in Inter-dominion relations in the post Partition period.

One did not have to live near the border to face harassment. Hindus and Muslims, who tried to cross to India and Pakistan respectively, faced ignominious body searches. At times, border officials would confiscate luggage without much pretext. Letters written to the major newspapers described personal experiences of such harassment. Sasanka Bose, like many others, wrote about his grievances to the major newspapers hoping for redress from the concerned ministries. He pointed out that at Sealdah station no list of commodities that were allowed with the passengers traveling to East Pakistan was available. Further although they were legally allowed to carry ten yards of cloth, the officials “were disinclined to allow even a single yard.”84

Bose also claimed to have witnessed the seizure of such mundane items as soap and razor blades from passengers. One intelligence official on the Indian side reported that the harassment had a modus operandi: “Guards would threaten to search only the women members of the evacuee group trying to cross the border. To avoid the humiliation of their women, male members among

82 ibid., 3.

83 File# 1/41/61-FIII, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1961, NAI.

84 Sasanka Bose, Letter to the Editor, HS, 3 November 1948, 4.

105 the evacuees then purchase exemption from such a search by giving away to them their cash jewellery and other valuable moveable property.”85

b) Smugglers vs. Border patrols

One of the immediate consequences of delimitation and regulation of economic goods was the rise in smuggling across the border. Partition had placed seventy one percent of jute growing lands in East Pakistan and all the hundred and four jute mills and bailing presses in

India.86 Sustenance of the jute mills created a severe demand for the raw material, which was further accentuated by India’s imposition of customs duty on that item. Second, both India and

Pakistan suffered from severe food shortage in the years after the Partition and were keen not to allow food grains such as rice to cross the borders. Subsequent trade agreements continued to place restrictions on the trade of both rice and jute. These commodities thus were the most frequently smuggled from respective countries.

While rice, cloth, kerosene oil, and salt were smuggled from India, jute, betel nuts, and chillies were the main products smuggled from East Pakistan.87 In addition to inter-dominion trade agreements, the administrative officials of the border districts in India implemented several measures to check the smuggling of items such as cloth and sugar to Pakistan. The District

Magistrate of Nadia issued a directive which forced cloth dealers to sell their merchandise only in the presence of an authorized officer, and in addition prevented them from selling to persons without ration cards and permits.88 Similarly, when the Nadia district officials discovered that

85 Note dated 30.4.64, File: 396/64(II), 1964, West Bengal Police, Intelligence Branch Archives, Calcutta.

86HS, 1 August 1948, 4.

87 Fortnightly report for the first half of May 1957, Reports and Returns, NAI.

88HS, 9 May 1948, 6.

106 women of Ranaghat were smuggling sugar by carrying it on their head at night, they prohibited all sale of sugar at night in that area.89 Although the state undertook such drastic measures to stop the illegal traffic of goods, for some villagers living at the borderlands smuggling provided an economic opportunity that they exploited to the hilt. As border dwellers, living within ten miles of the border, they were legally allowed to carry all kinds of goods between India and Pakistan.

Indian intelligence officials observed in 1964 that smuggling had become a “normal affair” and

“people living in both sides of the border very often indulge in smuggling which has been a very lucrative avocation for them.”90 The report concluded that the smuggling was “carried out under the tacit support of the police.” Border dwellers thus had an ambivalent relationship with the local agents of the state. Although the presence of these officials created an obstacle to normal trade, by enlisting the tacit support of these officials through bribes and other favors, the border residents subverted the state structures aimed to control their activities.

Understandably India and Pakistan were distressed at the loss of revenue and launched an extensive anti-smuggling drive to stop such activities. Prafulla C. Sen, the Civil Supplies

Minister in the West Bengal Government, issued a stern warning to all producers and traders of surplus areas that smuggling of food was a serious crime and it was their “patriotic duty” not to undertake such activities.91 Similarly, S M Afzal, the East Pakistani Food Minister, in December

1948 warned smugglers in the border districts “they would meet their fate at the hands of the military and civil patrols posted along the borders and for such people there should be no

89 ibid.

90 Note dated 30.4.64, File 396/64(II), 1964, West Bengal Police, Intelligence Branch Archives, Calcutta.

91HS, 5 March 1948, 3.

107 sympathy shown in any quarters.”92 Prevention of smuggling now became associated with one’s national duty, and the border citizens were asked to prove their patriotism by putting a stop to it.

Besides government officials, some citizens of West Bengal also voiced their grievances against smugglers and urged strict actions against them. Shyamapada Bhattacharjee, a MLA from Behrampore, Murshidabad combined communal issues with the phenomena of smuggling in that district. He pointed out that while essential goods such as cloth and sugar were not available in Indian markets, such commodities were available in “good quantities in areas of

Pakistan bordering the Indian Union…these goods are being mostly smuggled by people who style themselves as citizens of the Indian Union.” These smugglers showed a “total indifference and lack of patriotism” and were “shamefully denuding the union of its wealth”. Seventy five percent of them belonged to the majority community in the district that was a Muslim majority area.93 Similarly, S.M. , a petty merchant based in Dacca, appealed the East Pakistan

Prime Minister to stop the smuggling, arguing that such activities were not only weakening the country financially but would ultimately result in forcible union with India. The primary duty of every Pakistani citizen was to stop smuggling and the prime minister could prove his credibility by focusing his attention on this problem.94

Apart from declaring smuggling as “anti- national” and “unpatriotic,” India and East

Pakistan took some concrete measures to curb such illegal activities at the border. As a part of the National Defense Planning, the Government of West Bengal (GOWB) proposed the construction of three aerodromes in the border districts of Nadia, 24 Parganas, and Murshidabad,

92HS, 17 December 1948, 6.

93HS, 1 April 1948, 4.

94 File: 3L-3/1951, Home Political B Proceedings 529 -555, April 1952, BNA.

108 and a road connecting Calcutta to the border. Government officials claimed that these measures when implemented would “provide better facilities of easy communication between the capital and the border regions of the province and put Government in a better position to stop smuggling of various commodities.”95 Further, concrete pillars would be placed along the border and riverbanks to demarcate the boundaries of the two states. In addition, East Pakistan and West

Bengal set up private militias to tackle the problem of smuggling as well as instruct border citizens of their patriotic duties. The GOWB announced plans to raise an army of 15,000 men by the middle of 1948 to guard the 600 frontier posts of the province permanently in order to check smuggling and subversive activities and a special battalion to guard the 50-mile natural barrier along the river Ganges.96 B. C. Roy announced that such arrangements were also “for training villagers in border areas to defend themselves and to act in collaboration with the police in the neighborhood to assist them in stopping smuggling.”97

Moreover, a semi military volunteer corps came into being under the patronage of prominent individuals including Uday Chand Mahtab, the Maharaja of Burdwan. Initially registered as the Bangiya Jatiya Rakshi Dal (Bengal National Protection Brigade), this non- official association sought to train youths of the seven border districts of Darjeeling, Jalpaiguri,

West Dinajpur, Malda, Murshidabad, Nadia, and 24 Parganas, to “protect the frontiers of West

Bengal from any Aggression by evil minded persons.”98 A training center was established at

95HS, 28 January 1948, 1.

96HS, 4 January 1948, 1.

97The Statesman, 4 February 1948.

98No file number, Memorandum of Association of Bangiya Jatiya Rakshi Dal, , Home Political (secret), GOWB, 1948, WBSA.

109 under the permanent officer of Government with war experience.99 The number of volunteers trained in 1948 was 1982. The period of training was fixed for sixty days but later was extended to seventy-five days. During training, recruits were eligible to receive free accommodation and meals, uniforms, medical treatment. In addition the state would also pay them an honorarium of Rs. 5 per month making this a lucrative employment for some. Later in the year, this Brigade was incorporated into the West Bengal National Volunteer Force, which the Government of India funded and required to function in collaboration with the police, in the maintenance of law and order in the province.

In East Pakistan, the state carried out an extensive recruitment campaign to form the

Ansar Bahini in early 1948. The name ‘Ansar’ was adopted as “expressing within itself the historical and religious significance, the whole ideal of voluntary service to the community and to the nation,” while ‘Bahini’ literally translates to army.100 Although membership to this organization was open to all male Pakistanis between the age 18 to 45, volunteers mainly consisted of Muslim youth who had been in the recently demobilized Muslim National Guards.

At its core, the Ansar Bahini was a voluntary group recruited to help maintain the safety and security in rural areas as well as to mobilize resources to expand the local infrastructure. Then again, at a time when East Pakistan’s civil structure had yet to come into full force it meant that there was a break of communication between higher authorities at Dacca and those operating at the local and rural levels. This disjuncture often led lower echelons of the Ansar Bahini to use their police powers in an arbitrary and exploitative manner.

99 File No. 10/19/49- Police I, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.

100 James Buchanan, “First Annual Report on the Ansars” 1948, File: P10A-76/49, Police, GOEP, quoted in Van Schendel, “Working Through Partition.” 407.

110 The respective governments used these militias to deter smugglers, to protect the border, and to imbue the border citizens with the ideals of national citizenship. However, such ideals were often interweaved with communal antagonism. Allegations were hurled back and forth between India and Pakistan that respective border militias were inducing minority citizens to migrate to the other country. The East Pakistan government claimed that the santhals101 of

Jagannathpur, Pakistan had been induced by some Hindus of the Congress to leave their homes and cross over to India where they would be given Muslim houses.102 After conducting a local investigation, the Indian government denied such allegations. It in turn accused the Pakistani border militia of oppressing the santhals who were then forced to temporarily evacuate their homes. It is impossible to untangle what actually occurred but the above incident provides an insight into the confusion and antagonism that prevailed at the border. The Ansar Bahini were responsible for burning Muslim evacuee houses on the West Bengal side of the border so that

Hindu refugees would not be able to use these for rehabilitation. In addition, this ensured that the

Muslim evacuee from India would not be able to come back to his home in the future, making his/her decision to migrate to East Pakistan a permanent one.103 c) The Paper Route: Passports and Visas

During the first five years after Partition, official policy in India and East Pakistan sought to keep their mutual border ‘open’ even while regulating the flow of migrants. The Indian

Government had different policies with regard to movement on its western and eastern borders.

101 One of the main tribal groups in Bengal.

102 File: II-228/1948, Home Political B Proceedings 361-369, July 1949, BNA.

103 Joya Chatterji, “The Fashioning of a Frontier,” 237.

111 Indians wishing to travel to West Pakistan required a permit, but if they wished to travel to East

Pakistan, no such permission was necessary. Similarly, the Indian government also promulgated the Influx from Pakistan (Control) Ordinance, 1948, which made it mandatory for border crossers from West Pakistan to acquire a permit.104 Those crossing the border from East Pakistan did not require this permit. This permissiveness reflected the official belief that refugees from

East Pakistan would return to their homes once local situations improved. For India, refugee rehabilitation on its eastern borders was a financial strain on the provincial and central economies. For Pakistan the migration of the Hindu refugees signified its inability to provide security to its minorities. By keeping the border open, both governments hoped to restore confidence in the minds of the minorities and induce them to return to their homes.

However, official policy of a porous border did not last long. Faced with the continuous flow of migrant refugees, Nehru and Liaquat Ali concluded a treaty in 1950 which sought to guarantee security to the minorities on both sides. This treaty, concluded after the 1950 riots in

Khulna and Calcutta, failed in its projected aim of assuring the rights of minorities and 1950 –51 saw the highest peak in migration for both Hindu and Muslim minorities. The institution of passport and visa regulations in October 1952 thus marked increased efforts on both sides to monitor and prevent the migration of their respective citizens.105 Cross border commuting was now filtered through a system of permits and migration certificates, allowing both governments more power over who they would allow to cross their borders. Pakistan issued category A visas for Indian nationals “who live in Indian territory within ten miles of the East Bengal border and who normally earn their livelihood by working in Pakistan territory within ten miles of the East

104HS, 4 November1948, 4.

105 The passport system came into force on October 15, 1952 for India and on October 17, 1952 for East Pakistan.

112 Bengal border.”106 This visa was valid for a maximum period of five years and limited the areas to which an Indian national could venture in the Pakistan territory. Similarly, India agreed to issue visas to Pakistani citizens who lived along the border. Pakistani cultivators with land situated in an Indian village contiguous to Pakistan, shopkeepers and petty traders with businesses across the border and agricultural producers dependent on markets in the Indian villages along the border, were all required to provide rent receipts of their individual concerns to be eligible for such visas.107 In the definition of both States, such a borderland stretched ten miles east and west of the actual line of division. While recognizing and allowing border dwellers to continue their cultivation and other traditional occupations, these regulations arguably were intensified efforts to identify the citizens of the respective nations.

From October 1952, residents of India and Pakistan were required to obtain a passport if they wished to travel outside the country of their residence. The passport as a document of valid citizenship to one country was an imposition to those who remained uncertain whether they would opt for India or Pakistan. The scheme declared that those residents of undivided India, who had migrated to Pakistan since March 1 1947, were not citizens of India and hence would not be eligible for Indian Passports. Further, Pakistani nationals would not be able to enter India without . 108 Such requirements were in themselves problematic and contradictory. For those, mainly Muslims, who had migrated to Pakistan after

Partition and after the 1950 riots, but now wished to return to India, the passport system made it impossible by denying that they were ‘citizens’ of India. Again for the Hindu minorities in East

Pakistan who had hitherto traveled to and fro across the border to India without any paperwork,

106 File: 2B-17/1952, Home Political B Proceedings 968-972, March 1953, BNA.

107 The Statesman, 17 October 1952, 1.

108 Ibid., October 15, 1952, 1.

113 the passport system now required them to declare their citizenship to Pakistan first before they could attend to business in India. By October 1952, both states tried to ensure that the choice of migration and residency become irreversible for these minorities. Further, by attempting to fix their citizenship the states hope to put an end to the continuing movement of these migrants.

The ‘closing’ of the border acted as a catalyst for the Hindus and the Muslims and the days leading up to the introduction of the passport system witnessed large-scale migration from

East Pakistan to India. The Statesman, a pro- newspaper published from Calcutta, published figures of migration for the month of October when migration from East Pakistan to India through a single border outpost, Bongaon, averaged around 1000 persons daily.109 It also reported that “among the immigrants, is a fair sprinkling of Muslims who appear to be as anxious as Hindus to adopt Indian nationality before it is too late. This fact is interpreted to indicate that the exodus is not altogether occasioned by communal tension.”110 The same newspaper carried a telling photograph of the near empty border outpost of , India, on the first day when the scheme became operational to show the success of the scheme in curbing the refugee flow.111

Understandably the Scheme did not find support among the Hindu minorities in East Pakistan who viewed it as yet another obstacle in maintaining their economic and social ties with India.

Bhabesh Chandra Nandy, member of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, asserted that the

Passport Visa Scheme did not solve any border security issues in East Pakistan because “the boundary line sometimes divided the same house, the outer portion coming within Pakistan and

109Ibid., October 8, 1952, 8.

110 Ibid., 1.

111 Ibid., October 16, 1952, 1.

114 the inner portion of the house falling in the Indian Dominion.”112 Further, the reduction in the number of migrants also affected the local economy in the border region. “In every railway and steamer station such as Goalondo, Chandpur, Narayanganj, thousands of passengers used to come and go and hundreds of people as porters or business men were earning their livelihood.

Some were running small hotels and restaurants, some were selling pans (betel leaf), cigarettes and bidis (indigenous cigarettes), and some were working as coolies. Now as the number of men going by steamers and trains have reduced …these people have lost their earning and are now starving.” For Nandy, the introduction of the scheme thus was “impracticable and a most costly project.”113

To “alleviate the hardships” of minorities due to the introduction of the Passport and Visa

Scheme, the Indian government initially announced that migrants from East Pakistan would not require a Pakistani passport but only needed to have obtained a ‘migration certificate’ from the

Deputy High Commissioner for India in Dacca. To acquire such a certificate, the intending migrant would have to write to the visa officer in Dacca, providing details about himself and his family members and the reasons for migration to India. In addition, to prevent impersonation, he was required to provide photographs of himself and all his family members who would be migrating with him.114 The process promised to be simple, and cost effective by not needing the applicant and his family to travel to Dacca. However, by 1956 several anomalies in the system became evident which highlighted the contradictory concerns within the policymakers with regard to the East Pakistan migrants.

112 Constituent Assembly (Legislature) of Pakistan Debates, Vol. 1. No. 14 (Government of Pakistan, 25 March 1953), 716.

113 Ibid. , 717.

114 The Statesman, Oct. 15, 1.

115 The issue of migration certificates depended on the discretionary powers of the migration officers stationed at the High Commission in Dacca. In pursuance of the Indian government’s policy, these officials were instructed that “facilities for migration should be given in all genuine cases but should not be available to every member of the minority community regardless of the merits of the case.”115 This meant that those who had landed property or any business in East

Pakistan were not entitled to procure a migration certificate “unless there was a danger to their life,” or in cases involving “danger to the honor of women folk.” Economic distress was not a valid reason for migration since it was not confined only to the minority community but affected all Pakistan citizens. Further, the Indian government argued that if “the members of the minority community were to be encouraged by us to migrate because of economic distress in the country

(East Pakistan) we will only be providing justification for Pakistan propaganda that the Hindus in

East Bengal are only “shadow Pakistanis.”116

However, for some Indian officials, such a policy was too narrow in definition and requirements for intending migrants. A. C. Guha, the Minister for Revenue and Defense

Expenditure pointed that East Bengal had been suffering bad harvests and critical food crisis in the past few years, which made it difficult for the petty land or business owners to maintain their families. He claimed that East Pakistani government was being differential in its dispersal of relief measures towards its Hindu and Muslim citizens such that “ The middle and lower class

Hindus have now got no means of livelihood. The only alternative for them to save their life is to migrate.”117 Although Guha was making a clearly communal argument, it struck a chord within

115 Memo dated 27 August 1956, File# 1/22/56-FIII, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, 1956, NAI.

116 K M Kannampilly, 27 August 1956, ibid.

117 A C Guha, “Note on the Migration from East Bengal” 22 August 1956, ibid.

116 the higher authorities in Delhi. The Indian government did not change its policy but instructed its High Commission to relax its guidelines and issue migration certificates where it would remove genuine hardship.

The bureaucratic regulation of the border gave rise to a cottage industry of preparing false visas, passports and migration certificates in Dacca and Calcutta. In an attempt to curb such practices that prevented the governments from identifying their legal citizens, photographs became a key requirement for issue of such official documents. However, for many of the applicants, who resided in rural villages of East Pakistan, such a requirement often involved long treks to the nearest town and additional expense to those who often had limited means. In an attempt to relieve intending migrants from such problems, the Indian government proposed that migration certificates should limit their requirements to photographs of only the male members of the family thereby sparing the women. Such gendered concerns were also embedded in the process of acquiring passports in East Pakistan. The Pakistani passport scheme had a separate provision for mainly Muslim women who observed the by excusing them from having to submit photographs. A passport officer in Faridpur, East Pakistan noted however that a “ number of Hindu gentle men were coming up with the request that their women folk should be exempted from the necessity of submitting photographs because they were pardanashin.”118 The officer pointed out in his memo to the higher authorities in Dacca that very few Hindu women in East

Pakistan observed purdah. The concern expressed by the Hindu men was only because they wished to avoid the expenditure on photographs for passports.

Thus the passport and visa regulations of 1952 had a two-fold aim. Not only did they try to and control the number of people who would be allowed into India, but by issuing

118 Passport Officer, Faridpur, memo no. 74-PF dated 6 November 1952, File: 18P-54 /1952, Home Political B Proceedings 253-255, July 1953, BNA.

117 migration certificates to the potential evacuees, the Indian state had the power to identify who would be allowed to cross the borders. Further, the migrant was required to carry three copies of the migration certificate, handing one to the Pakistan outpost, another to the Indian outpost, and the third to passport authorities in India. Such a process was one of the rites of passage that the migrant had to undergo in his/her quest for Indian citizenship. It was at the border first and foremost that he or she had to declare his intent and renounce his citizenship of Pakistan.

Conclusion

The India-East Pakistan border as it evolved from a rough and ready border in 1947 to an international border by the 1960s, reflected the dynamic spatial and political differences between the two countries. At its inception, the border reflected the diverse ideals of the members of the

Boundary Commission. Although both the Congress and Muslim League were keen to wrest as much more territory for their respective nations, Radcliffe was concerned about making a decision that the international world would perceive to be fair. At no point in the deliberations of the Boundary Commission was there any concern about how the line would affect the people in the new borderlands.

Within months of the announcement of the Boundary Award, India and Pakistan were engulfed in the project of establishing, maintaining and controlling the border. The actual act of delineation was severely hampered by ecological problems and the existence of enclaves. The peculiarities of the border in some parts where it divided houses or separated cultivators from their lands compounded the problem. Territorial disputes continue to checker the history of this border even as the present Indian and Bangladesh government negotiate the delineation of the last 6.5 km stretch.

118 In addition to defining the political limits of the two nations, this border also became the economic frontier, restricting the free flow of bulk goods as well as items of daily use. The establishment of the border with its regulatory institutions such as the customs outposts and border check posts also led to the development of a subversive economy at the borderland.

Smuggling became rampant, its continuance despite state efforts to curb it, constantly undermined the territorial and jurisdictional limits of the nation. Often citizens at the periphery participated in the smuggling of goods even as both states tried to instill in them the virtues of moral citizenship.

It was at the border that competing nationalist projects met and the inhabitants at the border were drawn into the center of the post colonial endeavors of national identity formation.

Although their respective states sought to identify them as Indian and Pakistanis, the border citizens often had ambivalent attitudes towards such impositions. The new border, for these citizens at the periphery, became an embodiment of disruption and harassment. It sought to divide the cultivators from their fields, businessmen and consumers from their markets and separated families from their kith and kin. With time, these citizens evolved ways to bypass the official restrictions on the movement of goods and people by entering into symbiotic relationship with the state agents at the border. This ensured that this border continued to remain ‘open’ in actuality.

119 Chapter 4

Quest for Citizenship: Minorities and Requisition of Property

The outcomes of Partition were swiftly translated in the realms of identity formation.

Almost overnight, Bengalis had spawned another set of identities, which demarcated them as

Indians and Pakistanis, determined mainly by their continued residence on either side of the

Radcliffe Line. As people began to come to terms with their new identities, both states implicitly began to demand loyalty to their respective nations. In the absence of any clear indicators on how such loyalties could be assured, religious demographic identity, which had been the key basis for the division, continued to be the main defining factor. In popular and often in official perception, a Hindu was expected to move to India while a Muslim was to move to the newly created East or West Pakistan.

Within the first year of statehood, both states began to produce a linear equation between loyalty to the nation and citizenship. In such circumstances, those Hindus in Pakistan and

Muslims in India who continued to defy implicit expectations that they would migrate became, on the one hand, necessary political subjects whose continued residence in their natal countries, provided their countries with authentication for their secular aspirations. On the other hand, these minorities had to re-negotiate their public and private interactions in their daily lives as their routine actions were now automatically put under the microscope of national allegiance. Under such interrogations, minorities by virtue of their religion were assumed guilty of disloyalty till proven otherwise.1

1 Gyanendra Pandey indicates the important distinction between ‘nationalist Muslims’ and Muslims in the years immediately preceding the Partition. After Partition, the question that animated the debates within India was whether the Muslim could also be an Indian. Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition, 152-160.

117 This chapter examines the interstices between legal citizenship and notions of belonging.

Although Partition had divided the physical nation into two, citizenship, especially for minorities on the wrong side of the border was not immanent. The debates within India, on what constituted the moral nation, tended to identify Hindus and Sikhs as “natural” citizens and by default the

Muslim minorities as ‘naturally’ belonging to Pakistan.2 In Pakistan, especially in its eastern wing, Hindus were deemed to have a “natural attraction” to India. Migration of minorities, initially temporary, thus reflected their attempts to find security and negotiate this “natural” ascription of their identities as national citizens. However, for those minorities who continued to stay behind in their ancestral homes, citizenship remained imbricated within layers of past social and economic relations. Loyalty, for these minorities, was an attendant corollary to continued residence.

In the decades after 1947, those who continued their residence as minority citizens in either India or Pakistan frequently encountered metaphoric acid tests that demanded tangible proofs of their loyalty to the nation. Migration across the border seemed easier albeit a temporary remedy towards such prejudicial demands. Both India and Pakistan guaranteed citizenship rights to their minorities and passed several laws to protect minority property of those who had crossed the border. Initially, minorities retained legal ownership of their propertied wealth and maintained close ties with their extended family members who had remained behind.

However, such legal and bureaucratic measures circumscribed the citizenship rights of the very minorities that they sought to protect and in their implementation created potential “evacuees” and “refugees” out of minority citizens.

The first section of this chapter focuses on the policies of India and Pakistan towards their respective minorities. Both states were apprehensive of the unofficial migration of

2Ibid., 164-68.

118 minorities, which engulfed the Punjab region in 1947-48. India instituted a permit system on its western border in 1948 ostensibly to regulate the flow of migration to India. But the permit system primarily targeted those Muslim evacuees who left India during the 1947 disturbances but then returned. India policies on its eastern border were predicated on the understanding that the lack of violence there, as compared to Punjab, would not necessitate large-scale migration of minorities. Thus the Government of India did not institute a permit system in the east because of economic and social considerations and continued to regulate the border through local channels till the institution of the Passport and Visa Scheme in October 1952. Although both states were against any exchange of population and publicly guaranteed equal rights to its minorities, they transferred official personnel. Consequently their respective minority officers had the right to choose the country in which they wanted to serve.

The second section of the chapter focuses on the legislation surrounding the protection and requisitioning of properties belonging to those minorities who, despite government measures, had either temporarily or permanently moved across the border. In the process of migration, these minorities came to be termed as evacuees in their home countries and refugees or displaced persons in the country of their relocation. Official efforts to protect evacuee property often became entangled with rehabilitation measures for refugees. Thus evacuee property legislation and refugee rehabilitation measures often pitted “evacuee” rights against

“refugee” rights. Minorities, who were first evacuees and then refugees, suffered from the inability of their home governments to either keep their promises to protect their property in one country and their receiving governments to ensure economic rehabilitation. Under such circumstances, it was often easier to couch their frustrations with official measures within the rhetoric of minority persecution.

119 From the Partition’s Womb: Minority Citizens

Because of the religious demography of pre-partition Bengal, Bengali Hindus and

Muslims here were familiar with the political economy of being minorities. Although Bengali

Muslims had been declared a political majority within Bengal in the Communal Award of 1932, they remained imbricated within the existing minority politics of the All India Muslim League.

But Bengali Hindus, although part of the majority within all-India politics, had adopted the political tactics of minority politics within their home province. On the eve of Partition, Bengal politics exhibited two distinct elements divided along religious lines. Partition, widely seen as a

“solution” to the communal predicament, created new problems.

Indian and Pakistani leaders in 1947 confronted a key issue regarding the position of minorities in their new nation states. After the decision on June 20th to partition Bengal, the future of the Bengali Hindus in east Bengal became the focal point of public debate. Between

June and August 1947, Calcutta newspapers began to publish letters, from concerned individuals, mainly residing in eastern Bengal, that reflected the prevailing uncertainties.3 A letter from

Faridpur urged the exchange of population and questioned higher authorities, “ What will be the position of the Hindus in Pakistan Bengal? If they are given the right of citizenship of the

Hindustan union they will be treated as aliens in Pakistan Bengal. There is the same risk if they accept the right of citizenship of Pakistan dominion.”4 The condition and status of Hindu minorities in a declared stimulated apprehension. In July 1947, Kiran Shankar Roy, a Congress leader in eastern Bengal at that time, wrote to Jawaharlal Nehru describing such

3 See Hindustan Standard, “Task before Hindus in East Pakistan,” 21 June, 1947, 4; “The Fate of East Bengal Hindus,” 26 June, 1947, 4; “Future of East Bengal Hindus in Government Services,” 1 July, 1947, 4; “Minorities in East Bengal,” 15 July 1947, 4; “What the East Bengal Hindus Feel,” 15 July 1947, 4; and see similar letters and articles in HS 17 July, 1947, 4; 20 July 1947, 7; 23 July, 1947, 4; 25 July 1947, 4; 5 August, 1947, 3; 8 August, 1947, 4; 28 August, 1947, 4.

4 HS, 15 June, 1947, 4.

120 apprehension as “legitimate fear” among the minority community in East Pakistan. In Roy’s opinion minority Hindus were worried that they would be subjected to unfair discrimination in employment and expected interference or restrictions on their religion and culture.5 As a solution, Roy urged Nehru to ensure that these minorities not be regarded as aliens in India, even though they resided in East Bengal. In his reply to Roy, Nehru assured him that “the members of the minority communities in Pakistan should not be treated as aliens in India.” Nehru claimed that for these East Bengali Hindus, the question of being aliens did not arise while India had dominion status, and once “dominion status ends [that] nationality will have to be defined rather precisely. You can rest assured that we shall give every facility to minorities in Pakistan.

Essentially however, this will be a provincial matter.”6 In an article published in the Hindustan

Standard in July 1947 Nalini Ranjan Sarkar asserted that

Hindus in this part of Bengal are labouring under the notion, rightly or wrongly that the elemental security of life and property is not assured to them in the future East Bengal state. They also do not feel sure about their economic security or their honor. Last but not the least, they are afraid of their cultural and religious life being lost and merged into the culture and religion of the majority community.7

He then cautioned against mass migration because of the lack of land that would be necessary to support the ten million or more refugees from East Bengal. Regional Congress leaders such as

Sarker, a veteran of the 1905 Partition, repeatedly urged the Hindu minorities in East Bengal to remain there and pledge allegiance to the Pakistani state. They emphasized that the Hindus in future East Bengal would comprise around thirty percent of the population, sufficient to form a sustainable political opposition to any detrimental action from the Muslim majority.

5 Letter dated 18 July 1947 in S. Gopal ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Second Series, Vol. 3 (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund, 1990), 188.

6 Ibid.

7 HS, 27 July 1947, 4.

121 Nevertheless, Hindus in East Bengal remained skeptical of such assurances. Hemendra

Kumar Deb, a resident of Brahmanbaria district in East Bengal, noted,

The real issue is not whether the east Bengal Hindus would be allowed to live in peace in Pakistan but the issue is whether they would live as aliens in their own lands or would enjoy the same freedom which the rest of India are going to enjoy… The minds of east Bengal Hindus are not perturbed over possibilities of future communal riots but their real apprehension is for their future political status.8

Clearly, once freedom from British colonial rule had been assured, the next question in the minds of the Hindu minorities was their political and social standing in Pakistan.

In the days before Partition, contingency and confusion were the two catchwords defining the lives of minorities in Bengal. Individuals wrote to local and regional Congress leaders, seeking answers to their queries about their future status, and these local branches sent similar queries to Congress headquarters in New Delhi. Nikunja Behari Saha, President of the

Nagarpur Congress Committee in Mymensingh district, anxiously enquired of the AICC,

What will be the future relation between the Congress committees lying in the Eastern Pakistan with the AICC? Will they run as before? How is it possible? Who shall we follow? What will be our present work? The minority of Pakistan has been much terror stricken not only that some of them have already left for West Bengal; others are seeking opportunity [sic] villagers very often flock together and asks our advice. What advice and consolation can we render to them?9

Sadiq Ali, the General Secretary of the AICC, was unable to provide any concrete assurances and lamented that, “The questions you have raised are before us but it is not possible for us to reply to them at this stage. When we have before us the full picture of the Pakistan state, as it will finally emerge, we shall be in a position to consider the questions you have raised.”10

8 HS, 23 June 1947, 4.

9 Nikunja Behari Saha to Sadiq Ali, 4 July 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.

10 Sadiq Ali to N. B. Saha, 10 July 1947, ibid.

122 Although Hindus in East Bengal made a concerted demand for a transfer of population,

Nehru and Jinnah were against any mass population exchange, recognizing the economic burden such a process would engender. On the one hand, Jinnah, at a gathering of defense and civilian personnel at Karachi on 11 October 1947, declared that if the “ultimate solution of the minority problem is to be mass exchange of population, let it be taken up at governmental plane and not be left to be sorted out by blood thirsty elements.” 11 On the other hand, Nehru thought that an exchange of population would “upset the ,” and that “we will sink as a nation without any resources with a starving and dying population.” 12 However, the minorities in East

Bengal did not accept the possible economic consequences. A group of east and north Bengal

Hindus petitioned the AICC on 15 August 1947 demanding an exchange of population as their historic right as nationalist freedom fighters. They advocated the need for effective planning and disputed Nehru’s contention arguing, “Why should it be absurd and foolish, an Empire of over thirty crores with vast wastelands, resources, brains, industrial prospects certainly can accommodate two crores more (of East and North Bengal, and ), a family of 15 may surely accommodate one more.”13

Nonetheless, immediately after 15 August, both Jinnah and Nehru publicly assured their respective minorities of their citizenship rights and the continuation of their religion and culture.

In the first session of the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Jinnah promised the Hindu minorities that they had nothing to fear and would have citizenship rights equal to those of the majority Muslim citizens. He declared,

11 Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Speech, quoted in S. Gopal ed., Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 148 fn.

12 Ibid., 148.

13 “East and North Bengal Hindus,” 15 August 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML.

123 Much has been said against it [the Partition], but now it has been accepted, it is the duty of every one of us to loyally abide by it and honorably act according to the agreement which is now final and binding on all… If you change your past and work together in a spirit that everyone of you no matter what community he belongs to, no matter what relations he had with you in the past, no matter what his colour, caste or creed, is first, second, and last a citizen of this state with equal rights, privileges and obligations, there will be no end to the progress you will make.14 He further affirmed that, “You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your or to any other places of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion caste or creed- that has nothing to do with the business of the state.” In later years, both Pakistani officials and Indian authorities often quoted this speech; first to provide assurance to their minorities that Pakistan was not a theocratic state and second as an indictment of unkept promises.

Similarly, when he addressed the annual Congress Working Committee meeting on 15

November 1947, Nehru asserted that

The Congress wants to assure the minorities in India that it will continue to protect to the best of their ability, their citizen rights against aggression. The central government as well as the provincial governments must accordingly make every effort to create conditions wherein all minorities and all citizens have security and opportunity for progress. All citizens must also on their part not only share in the benefits of freedom but also shoulder the burdens and responsibility that accompany it, and must above all be loyal to India.15

Implicit within his guarantee was the notion that minorities specially had to ensure that their loyalty to the nation was above suspicion.

During the summer and autumn of 1947 local and national Congress leaders began to articulate an explicit hostage theory whereby the safety of the minorities of one state would

14 Constituent Assembly of Pakistan Debates, Vol. 1 (2) (Karachi: Governor General’s Press and Publications, 11 August 1947), 19-20.

15 Congress resolution moved by Nehru at the AICC meeting, New Delhi, 15 November 1947, File no. ED-7 (Part II) 1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML. Emphasis added

124 guarantee the security of the other. In July 1947, when urging Hindus to remain in East Bengal,

Nalini Ranjan Sarkar boldly declared that “I have absolutely no doubt that in West Bengal and in the Indian Union the Muslims would get a fair deal, and this cannot but react favorably on the

Hindu minorities in Pakistan.” 16 Addressing the annual AICC meeting on 15 November 1947, the Congress Working Committee President, Jivatram Kripalani noted,

We should frankly tell the League minded Muslims that though we, Congressmen and our governments are determined to protect them, we can’t do so merely on the strength of our police and army…. The safety of the Muslims must come from their Hindu neighbors who form a majority of the population and from whom the majority in the ranks of the police and army must come. These will not be active in affording protection unless they know that their co-religionists in Pakistan are getting a fair deal.17

Another well-known Congress member and a Muslim, Maulana , acknowledged that,

It was being openly said in the Congress circles that Hindus in Pakistan need not have any fears as there would be 45 millions of Muslims in India and if there was any oppression of Hindus in Pakistan, the Muslims in India would have to bear the consequences… It implied that partition was being accepted on the basis that in both India and Pakistan, there would be hostages who would be held responsible for the security of the minority community in the other state.18

The parallel riots that engulfed Punjab immediately after the Partition confirmed such a perception in the public mind. Reminiscing in 1968 on the Partition period, Pravash Chandra

Lahiry, a Hindu Congress leader in East Bengal, noted that the Bengali Muslims became apprehensive as news of butchering of Hindus in West Punjab reached West Bengal. According to Lahiry, such obvious correspondence was a direct outcome of the Partition that had created

16 HS, 27 July 1947, 4. Also see, HS Editorial, 15 July, 1947, and Letters to the Editor in the same, 17 July, 1947, where the writers’ prophesized that the condition of Hindu minorities would depend on reciprocal treatment of Muslim minorities in India.

17 Congress Resolution at AICC Meeting in New Delhi, File no. ED-7 (Part II) 1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML. Italics in original.

18 M.A.K Azad, India Wins Freedom, 232.

125 minority populations who, almost overnight, had became responsible for the actions of their co- religionists across the border.19 Lahiry contended that in Bengal, Mahatma Gandhi who had arrived in Calcutta in September 1947 to calm fears of the Muslim minorities in West Bengal had forestalled violence in the aftermath of Partition.

Minorities as ‘hostages’ may have acted as a deterrent to large-scale violence on the eastern border, but they also introduced some basic and difficult questions on citizenship and belonging within the new nation states. For example, Azad noted that on the eve of independence, “Jinnah left for Karachi with a message to his followers that now that the country was divided they should be loyal citizens of India.” Such suggestions had left Muslim leaders in minority provinces such as and Bihar which remained part of India with a sense of deception and loss. Azad remarked that “strange fact that these Muslim Leaguers had been foolishly persuaded that once Pakistan was formed, Muslims whether they came from a majority province would be regarded as a separate nation… they at last realized that they had gained nothing but in fact lost everything by the partition of India.”20 Having been numerically and politically weakened, the minority Muslims in India had to confront the difficult question of national loyalty.

Similarly Pravash Chandra Lahiry’s initial reaction to the Partition was one of personal failure and stark alienation. He noted in his memoirs, “I was a freedom fighter of the Indian nationalist movement. I used to feel proud to be an Indian. But today I still exist but not as an

Indian – my identity is that of a Pakistani! There is only one question in everyone’s mind – Will

19 Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Ruparekha ( and Pakistan) (Chakdah, Nadia: Shyama Prakashani, 1968), 51-2.

20M.A.K. Azad, India Wins Freedom, 243-44.

126 we be able to live in a theocratic state with honor?”21 , the secretary of the East

Bengal minorities’ association, also lamented that Hindus in East Bengal were ‘no longer

Indians’.22 Letters to West Bengal newspapers also indicated this sense of confusion over their political identity. Sailendranath Roy from Dhaka wrote, “A large section of people in eastern

Bengal cannot reconcile themselves to the idea that they are no longer Indians or even Bengalis but merely Pakistanis.”23 Although Partition had engendered two new nations, it had yet to bring about clear definitions about national identity24.

The primary issues were twofold. First, was it possible for Hindus living in East Pakistan to identify themselves with India even while maintaining residence in East Pakistan? Secondly, was it possible for minority Muslims in India who had hitherto identified with the to acquire not only legal but also moral citizenship of India? Although the Constituent

Assembly of India, instituted in December 1946 to debate the legal dimensions of nationhood and citizenship and to draft the Indian Constitution, decided to grant equal rights to all citizens irrespective of caste and creed, they tacitly required citizenship to be based on residency.

Consequently Hindu minorities whose residences became part of Pakistan were expected to acquire Pakistani citizenship. But minorities in East Pakistan hoped for a different declaration.

After the June 20th Declaration, the local branch of the Hindu Mahasabha in the Munshiganj district of Dacca passed a resolution demanding “the right of citizenship or equal rights and privileges be conceived to the Hindu population of Eastern Pakistan in the West Bengal

21 Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Rup Rekha, 36-7.

22 Samar Guha, Non-Muslims Behind the Curtain, 37.

23 HS, 19 November 1947, 4.

24Nehru announced at a Press Conference on 15 December 1947 in Calcutta that, “Even though Pakistan is a separate and independent country- and we must treat it so- I find it a little difficult to think of it as alien to India and of its people as anything but Indians.” Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 214.

127 province[sic], as such no passport be required for Hindus of eastern Pakistan to go to Indian union.”25

This question of nationality and national identity for minorities residing on the ‘wrong’ side of the border was fundamental both in the debates leading up to the Partition and in the public mind after the division as respective governments attempted to articulate clear guidelines.

Amrendra Nath Mukherjee, in an article published a month after Partition in the Modern Review, a nationalist journal published from Calcutta, debated whether Indian nationality should be conferred on the basis of jus soli (law of soil) or jus sanguinis (law of blood).26 He argued that all minorities, especially the Hindus in East Bengal, should not be deprived of their Indian nationality on the basis of their residence outside of the new political boundaries. Rather minority Hindus should be accorded a ‘double nationality.’ Although Muslims of Pakistan should also be allowed to adopt Indian nationality, Mukherjee assumed that “ Muslims of

Pakistan feel glory in their separate nationality and would reject any offer of Union (Indian) nationality even if it was conferred upon them.” But the Hindus in Pakistan “would feel glory in their mother State…and submit to Pakistan nationality with reluctance and under pressure of circumstances.”27 If hostilities occurred between the two countries, Mukherjee continued that persons with such dual citizenship would declare their loyalty to one country even if they may reside in the other. Such a declaration of allegiance would suffice to prevent any accusations of .

25 Resolution dated 30 June 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

26 A. N. Mukherjee, “Nationality in the Indian Union,” MR, Vol. 82 (September 1947), 203-4.

27 Ibid., 204.

128 Mukherjee was not alone in advocating such simplistic formula ensuring Indian citizenship to the minority Hindus in East Bengal. In a letter to the Amrita Bazar Patrika of

Calcutta, a correspondent identified only with the initials C.L.C, demanded that the Constituent

Assembly should ensure that “the people of minority communities in Pakistan if they so choose can elect India citizenship by virtue of their citizenship of pre-partition India, while residing in

Pakistan and will thus forfeit their claim to Pakistan citizenship…” Although this legislation would result in making the minorities “aliens in their country of residence, the statutory provision will create the necessary psychological atmosphere by removing their sense of being left in the lurch.” Further, the writer asserted that such a provision would enable India “to intervene through constitutional means in case Pakistan continues in its policy of persecution of minorities who by virtue of their electing Indian citizenship will then be Indian nationals.28 For both these individuals, a seamless interface between national identity and loyalty to the nation did not involve a change of address. Pre-Partition social ties and residence rather than post- partition domicile were the determining factor in attaining Indian citizenship. However, for minorities in West and East Bengal who continued to reside in their ancestral homes, such ingenuous formulations of nationality became complicated with residence and property ownership.

Nehru, at the plenary session of the Congress in 1948, vetoed the theoretical possibility that Hindu minorities could remain in East Bengal but become citizens of India, as impractical and disastrous. Rather, he clarified “The only right course for those who live in the Indian dominion is to be loyal to the Indian dominion and similarly this should apply to the other side,

28 ABP, 8 April 1948, 4.

129 because there is no other way of approach to the problem.”29 Nehru’s declaration contradicted the hopes of Hindu minorities in East Bengal for whom inclusion within the imagined national community through constitutional means was not based on their current residence.

For those who were on the ‘right’ side of the border, becoming Indians and Pakistanis respectively, after Partition, did not elicit a similar dilemma between their national identity and citizenship. However, for those who became minorities, especially those living in the partitioned provinces such as Bengal, nationality became a key issue determining not only residency but also loyalty. For Muslims in West Bengal, the communally charged environment of India’s relations with the princely states of Kashmir and Hyderabad assured that they became the quintessential representatives of the whole community in their localities.30 As members of a community, which had been closely connected with demand for Pakistan, the Muslim minority in India became the usual suspects of anti- state activities. A letter to the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika is emblematic of the general feeling towards the Muslim minorities in the region. Written in the aftermath of the riots of 1950, the author, S. C. Chatterjee, asserted that,

Muslims having achieved their first objective – Pakistan, are busy making preparations in that state for the attainment of their next objective, namely Pakistanization [sic] of India…we find organized efforts are being made by some Muslims in India to help Pakistan in many ways. This is not unnatural for them... They have been advised to keep themselves ready for the appointed day of liberation…the soft hearted treatment of all Muslims irrespective of their real attitude towards India, and the stern attitude towards the Hindus which seem to mark the present administration of our country are all but disconcerting to many sane people. It is as if the time honored maxim of administration namely, controlling the wicked and protecting the good citizens has been reversed for the time being.31

29 Jawaharlal Nehru, “Towards Amity between India and Pakistan.” Speech at the plenary session of the Indian National Congress, 19 December 1948. The , 20 December 1948.

30 For an elaboration of the condition of minority Muslim in West Bengal after the Partition see Joya Chatterji, “Of Graveyards and Ghettos.” Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition and Vazira Zamindar, Divided Families have made similar arguments on the western side.

31 S C Chatterjee, Letter to the Editor, ABP, 13 March 1950, 4. Emphasis added.

130

In addition to arguing that the minority Muslims were inherently disloyal, Chatterjee deployed the stereotype of the ‘wicked’ and aggressive Muslim against the ‘good citizens’ who by implication are the Hindus.

The discourse on Muslim disloyalty to the Indian nation was echoed at the national level, especially at the Constituent Assembly sessions after Partition, as Indian leaders debated the issue of minority rights. Any demand for separate electorates or reservation of legislative seats for the Muslim minority was interpreted as reminiscent of pre-Partition League politics.

Vallabhbhai Patel, the Deputy Prime Minister of India indicated, “Those who want that kind of thing (separate electorates) to have a place in Pakistan, not here… We are laying the foundations of One Nation, and those who choose to divide again and sow the seeds of disruption will have no place, no quarter here.”32

Nehru was aware that the minorities in the new nations would be the first to confront the issue of notional citizenship. At press conference in Delhi in October 1947, he noted “there are people for whom the question is not decided in their own minds, and we do not want to force a decision on them. A Hindu for instance, may be in Karachi; I cannot tell him that he cannot become an Indian citizen; if he wants he can be one and we will accept him. But if you live here you owe loyalty to the state you live in.”33 Nonetheless, he went on to qualify that “an Indian citizen may live in Pakistan, but he owes allegiance to us and he is not a citizen of Pakistan.”

Although at first glance his utterances may seem contradictory, it is evident that for Nehru the primary criterion for citizenship was loyalty to the state, even if one’s residence remained on the

32 Constituent Assembly Debates (henceforth CAI), Vol. VIII (New Delhi: Government of India, 16 May to 16 June 1949), 271.

33 Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol. 4, 148.

131 ‘wrong’ side of the border. He was, however against any ‘dual citizenship’ arguing that once both countries became politically stable, national citizenship would follow suit.34

Muslim and Hindu minorities of Bengal who had the means to migrate sought to end their predicament by moving across the border. They hoped that such a move, influenced by unsettled political circumstances, would resolve the immediate differences between legal and moral citizenship. Those who did not migrate had to negotiate the semiotics of religious identity in their daily lives. An editorial in the Morning News, published in Dacca, East Bengal, and claiming to represent the viewpoint of the Muslim minority in West Bengal, questioned, “ Do

Muslims live here by right or on sufferance? If the Government wants them to live like shudras it should not fight shy of saying so, and in that case there would be no need for the Muslim members to pollute the West Bengal Assembly by their unwanted presence.”35 It is significant that the editor, in indicated the discrimination towards the Muslim minority, adopted the terminology of the caste system in which lowest rung comprised the shudras. On another occasion Fazlur Rahman a resident of Calcutta wrote to his friend in Dacca in early 1948 describing the situation in Calcutta as no longer conducive towards Muslims. According to

Rahman, Muslims in West Bengal could not “even move freely by wearing a lungi.”36 Further at the time of , “colored water was thrown on Muslims and Europeans by saying that those who want to live in Hindustan should have to observe all the Hindu festivals otherwise they may

34 Ibid., 147.

35 Morning News, 14 February 1948.

36 A piece of colored or checkered cloth wrapped around the lower part of the body. In the communal climate of the Partition, the lungi signified both class and religion as it became associated with lower class Muslim attire. In contrast, the dhoti, mainly white, became symbolic of upper class Hindu elite. For the semiotic significance of clothing in the colonial period see, Emma Tarlo, Clothing Matters, Dress and Identity in India (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1996).

132 go to Pakistan.”37 Another anonymous writer described how the Muslims going to East Pakistan were “thoroughly searched and those carrying cloth or other prohibited articles are arrested. This is another way how this Hindu government harasses Muslims …I understand that restrictions are going to be tightened and the public, particularly the Muslims who are the target, will be put to great trouble. In these circumstances he is wise who gets aside before the storm comes with full blast.”38 Minorities who continued to remain in their ancestral homes thus prepared themselves for flight across border at any hint of trouble.

The Case for Optees: Divided Loyalties?

The Partition was not only a physical and constitutional division but entailed a splitting up of financial assets, administrative police and military resources, even prisoners and inmates of mental asylums. Ostensibly such a division of resources, determined by population and economic requirements, would allow each country equal footing as they began their journey into nationhood.39 Administrative personnel, especially the elite Indian Civil Service (ICS) officers, had the ‘option’ to choose the country in which they wanted to continue their service.

However, the general assumption, in India and Pakistan, that religion would be the basis of the choice ensured that Hindu and Sikh officers were expected to serve in India and Muslim officers

37Fazlur Rahman, Letter dated 1 April 1948, File PM 119-48, West Bengal Police, Special Branch (henceforth WBPSB), 1948.

38 Anonymous, Letter dated 10 March 1948, File PM 119-48, WBPSB, 1948.

39 The question of division of the sterling balances and moveable assets remained unresolved till November 1947, when Vallabhbhai Patel and reached an agreement whereby Pakistan received 17.5 percent of the cash and sterling balances and in return covered the same proportion of India’s national debt. India and Pakistan would divide the remaining moveable assets in the ration of 4: 1 respectively.

133 in Pakistan.40 These Optees, as they were called, were given the right to opt permanently or provisionally. Those who decided to exercise the latter option were given the right to revise their decision within six months, and both states guaranteed that they would take back those who revised their provisional decisions. The element of choice was often illusory as the communal logic of the Partition played a primary role in forcing such decisions. For these minority civil servants caught between serving the state and serving the nation, their decisions to migrate were taken not only because of a general feeling of insecurity but often under coercion from neighbors and co-workers.41

Yet, both states could not officially “induce” the Hindu and Muslim civil servants to choose between their state of residence and inclusion within their prospective majority community. One was free to remain a minority within India or Pakistan as long as he or she was loyal to the state. Those personnel who were indecisive about their choices quickly faced several problems. For example, Safdar Ali Khan, a Muslim guard in , in Uttar Pradesh, India initially submitted his application to move to Pakistan. He changed his mind and decided to remain in India claiming that the move was too laborious and difficult. He claimed that his earlier decision had been ‘forced’ upon him by his co-workers and noted, “It is useless and self contradicting if I claim to be a patriotic son of India which I have blundered [sic] in favor of

Pakistan. Really speaking, as I have stated above, the decision was not my own but I made under compulsion. I am an Indian first and an Indian last. I want to live in India and die in India. So I

40 Not everybody supported this division of the civil services on a communal basis. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad suggested that “officials from West Punjab, Sind, or East Bengal, whatever their community, should remain in Pakistan. Similarly service men who belonged to the Indian provinces should serve India regardless of whether they were Hindus or Moslems… Adminstration would thus be free of communal poison and the minorities in each state would feel a greater sense of security.” M.A. K Azad, Indian Wins Freedom, 237.

41 Joya Chatterji alludes to “a systematic campaign of intimidation launched to ‘persuade’ Muslims in government service to quit West Bengal and go to Pakistan.” in “Of Graveyards and Ghettos,” 230.

134 must serve in India.”42 Moreover, his ailing mother did not want her son to leave. However, the

Government of India judged his petition within the narrowest terms of the law. The authorities indicated that Safdar Ali Khan was seeking to revoke his final option after having been given six months to ponder on his decision. Thus he had crossed the appointed period and by law could not be allowed to change his option. In the government’s view, decisions about residency and citizenship needed no longer than six months. If one changed his decision, then the newly formulated rules would determine the response.

In Bengal Prafulla Ghosh, the chief minister of Bengal in 1947 announced that all Hindu officers of East Bengal would be given the option to choose India as their base of operation. Out of the nineteen Muslim ICS officers in Bengal, eighteen opted to join the Government of

Pakistan.43 All of the Hindu ICS officers opted to serve in India.

In effect, for Bengal, which had a high percentage of Hindu officers in the civil bureaucracy, this signified a quasi-state sponsored official exchange.

Not surprisingly, Ghosh’s announcement did not find favor with some of the minority

Hindus in eastern Bengal who realized that such a transfer would result in significant concentration of Muslims within higher ranks thus skewing communal equation against them. At a meeting held on 23 July 1947, some representatives of the Hindu community passed a resolution requesting the West Bengal Government to revise their policy. Similarly, a letter to

Hindustan Standard urged “Even at the risk of being misunderstood, the West Bengal government ought to make it clear at once that no Hindu officer who is a permanent resident of

East Bengal will be allowed to serve in West Bengal as long as it can be shown that his service

42 S.A. Khan to A.K. Azad, September 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. 4, 421.

43 Saroj Chakrabarty, With Dr. B. C. Roy and Other Chief Ministers; A Record upto 1962 (Calcutta: Benson’s, 1974), 45.

135 interest will be safe in the hands of the East Bengal government.” 44 The writer feared, “It is reported that as a result of the choice of the Hindu government employees for West Bengal, the new government of East Bengal will be short of officers in the BCS (Bengal Civil Service) and the BPS (Bengal Police Service) cadres by more than two hundred which deficiency will be met by recruitment of Muslims from outside of Bengal.” He noted that the decision to join the West

Bengal government was ‘unpatriotic’. In a similar vein, a pamphlet showcasing the minority

Hindus’ plight in East Bengal claimed that the policy of transferring officials had isolated the community even further.45

When each state implicitly conflated an officer’s loyalty to the state of his choice with his religion, the difficulties increased. For example, Ghulam Hussain Hidayatullah, the premier of the Sind province in West Pakistan, allegedly circulated a private note that identified the existing leakages of confidential information with the non-Muslim members of the Pakistani Criminal

Investigation Department. He stated that, “I feel compelled to the necessity of placing only

Muslims in confidential branches and also in the CID staff.” 46 Similarly in India, Govind

Malaviya, the youngest son of the Pandit , a prominent Hindu nationalist and a member of the Central Legislative Assembly, echoed some perceptions about those

Muslim officers who had decided to remain in India. In a letter to Vallabhbai Patel, he voiced his misgivings about these officers,

I have been worried over the report in the newspapers that the personnel of the services are receiving enquiries as to whether they would prefer to remain in Pakistan or in India. Is it contemplated that Muslim officers (and who does not know the part they have been playing during these several months in the secretariat and other offices?) will

44 HS, 27 July 1947, 4. Parenthesis mine.

45 “East and North Bengal Hindus,” Pamphlet dated 15 August 1947, File no. G-30/1947-48, AICC Papers, NMML, New Delhi.

46 Note, 30 September 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. IV, 433.

136 be allowed to remain with us if they choose to do so? It is a terrible price we have paid for getting rid of this curse of divided loyalties and fifth columnism! Have we still to carry this load round our neck? It may sound a little hard, but the only right and safe course will be that we should ask them without reservation or exception to move onto their own area.47

Patel replied that once India became independent on 15 August,

the service rules and regulations will be strictly enforced and no disloyalty will be tolerated. The oath of loyalty to the Indian government will first be administered to all, and anyone found to have other sympathy or loyalty with any outside agency or organization will have to leave service. You may therefore rest assured that proper action will be taken to see that all such people are weeded out from here.48

But how did a minority officer show his loyalty if he had decided against migration and remained in his home? Was it even possible to design a process that would measure loyalty to the nation? Nazir Hussain Rizvi, a well-educated Muslim lawyer from , proposed an innovative if fantastic idea to counter the “atmosphere surcharged with suspicion and distrust” in his hometown. In a letter to Patel he declared, “I come forward to assert my loyalty to my motherland and in proof whereof I beg to offer not only my services but also my life unreservedly and unconditionally in the cause of my country. I am ready to do anything, whether directed against any foreign power or person of my religion. As a guarantee of my sincerity and truthfulness of my assertion I offer my mother and three unmarried sisters as hostages to be held by the Government.”49 Rizvi’s pledge implicitly objectified the women in his family as guarantors of his personal honor. As expected, Patel certified that the Government of India would not take “hostages” to guarantee loyalty and indicated that Rizvi could give “positive proof of (his) loyalty” in other ways.50 Although Rizvi’s proposal may seem farfetched, it

47 Govind Malaviya to Sardar Patel, 4 July 1947, in Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. 4, 411. Emphasis added.

48 Patel to Malaviya, 7 July 1947, ibid, 413. Emphasis added.

49 Nasir Hussain Rizvi to Patel, 15 October 1947, Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, Vol. IV, 437-8.

50 Ibid.

137 illustrates the confusion that plagued people’s minds with regard to their citizenship and identity in post-partition India.

Residence and Citizenship

The relationship between residence, national citizenship and loyalty remained unresolved and continued to complicate the daily lives of those individuals who tested its parameters with their unique circumstances. In the absence of any tangible guidelines on what constituted legal citizenship, residence and property ownership became key sites which determined one’s citizenship within the state. Population movement across borders, however, complicated this issue of residence. The primary question that confronted both states and their minority citizens was whether the residence and property ownership implied nationality and/or notions of belonging. Could a person who had left the jurisdictional boundaries of one nation where he owned property continue to be the legal owner even though he may have adopted a foreign nationality? More importantly, could an evacuee continue to remain loyal to the country of his birth?

These were central questions for the employees of the Government of East Bengal who had opted to join service in East Bengal while retaining their properties in West Bengal. Low pay in Government service and the lack of housing in Dhaka had ensured that these Optees had to leave their families in West Bengal and continue to supplement their incomes from their properties there. However, by 1953, the imposition of border control through passports and visas had made it difficult for the continuance of family ties. Further, the Evacuee’s Property Act in

138 India, promulgated in 1950 to protect the property of minority Muslims who had fled to Pakistan, was widely perceived as a method of legal dispossession of such property.51

To address these issues, the East Bengal Secretariat Association, formed in 1947 in

Dacca, framed a memorandum to the East Bengal authorities in September 1953 that reflected the persistence of confusion with regard to property ownership and national citizenship. Their memorandum began by emphasizing that “The Government employees who opted to serve East

Bengal at the time of Partition have become Pakistanees [sic] irrespective of the fact that some of them originally belonged to territory now falling in India…”52 There was no contradiction between being Pakistani citizens and property ownership in India. They stressed that, “…when the Optees came to serve the Government of Pakistan the Optees naturally expected that this would not jeopardize their right and title to their properties in India…” However, “ Muslims are not getting a fair deal” in India. The authors of the memorandum urged the East Pakistan state to provide facilities which would enable them to dispose or exchange their property in India and to take steps to counter the “propaganda not to purchase Muslims property” in India.53

The matter became complicated, as the memorandum pointed out, in the case of the family members of deceased Optees, who having no recourse to income were forced to return to

India. However, “the door to returning to India…has now virtually been closed with the introduction of Passport system as a Pakistani Muslim can never expect a fair deal and scope to resettle in India on return from Pakistan particularly in the absence of any guardian.” In effect the memorandum was requesting the East Pakistan state to act as the male provider to the family

51 For operation and impact of the Evacuee Property regulations on Muslims of Delhi, see Zamindar, Divided Families, Chapter 4.

52 File: 8A-28/52, B Proceedings 1298-99, Home (Political), Government of East Bengal, April 1953, BNA.

53 Ibid.

139 of deceased Optees. Although the introduction of the Passport and Visa Scheme on the eastern border did not legally discriminate between Hindu and Muslim Pakistani citizens, the latter’s return was usually subject to suspicion.

The Indian Government had in 1948 introduced a Permit system on its western border to stem the flow of migration from West Pakistan, especially the return exodus of Indian Muslims.

An official publication justified such a step thus “The return of Muslims will impose a heavy strain upon the economy of the Dominion [India]. Cognizant of this danger, the government of

India has recently introduced the permit system to check this movement.”54 The argument of strained rehabilitation resources of the Indian government was soon turned on its head as an editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika equated the particularities of the “one way traffic” with threats to the national security of India. The editorial noted in no uncertain terms,

The return journey of two thousand Muslims on the average per day has been going for at least the last six months. By this time several lakhs of Muslims must have arrived from Pakistan. It is quite possible that many of them are sincerely repentant for having left their homes in India for Pakistan. But it is as likely that not a few of them have arrived to strengthen the forces of fifth columnists.55

Migration of Muslim minorities thus evinced two essential conclusions which would continue to influence their residence in India. First, they were perceived as a homogenous group and identified as inherently pre-disposed towards Pakistan. Hence their migration on the one hand was perceived as legitimate but on the other hand, disloyal to India, where they had resided till the Partition. Secondly, their return migration signified their lack of confidence in the Pakistan state itself. But more importantly, their migration to Pakistan had clearly laid out their loyalty to another state which their return could not erase. A few days later, another editorial in the same

54 After Partition, 74.

55 ABP, 10 July 1948, 4.

140 newspaper categorically stated that, “ A non-Muslim finds it impossible to adjust himself to the political pattern of the ancient Shariat. We do not know how a Muslim in his heart of hearts reacts to the Indian Union.”56 According to the editorial, the introduction of the ‘rule of the

Shariat’ in Pakistan thus provided a legitimate basis for the Hindu minority in Pakistan to feel alienated whereas, the returning Muslims already familiar with India was taken to be inherently disloyal. Their migration had, forever, branded the Muslim minority as fifth columnists.

The members of the East Pakistan Secretariat Association in Dacca framed their petition within such prevailing assumptions. In their memorandum to the authorities they noted that although by choosing to serve in East Pakistan, “they had burnt their boats and they did not want to go back,” they were also prepared to “ try to get Indian nationality in the interest of their properties in India…”57 Clearly, nationality had its utilitarian aspects.

More importantly, the efforts of both India and Pakistan to establish elaborate legal machinery to control and fix identities of their citizens had created the space for debates on national identity and loyalty to the nation. Further, the project of establishing post-Partition national orders continued to demand such identification in terms of inclusion and exclusion within majority and minority national communities. The consequent uncertainties provided the impetus for minority migration. However migration itself did not solve many of the existing problems and generated new issues.

Requisition of Property

56 ABP, 15 July 1948, 4.

57 File: 8A-28/52, B Proceedings 1298-99, Home (Political), Government of East Bengal, April 1953, BNA.

141 There has been little scholarly focus on the projects of nation building and how Hindu and Muslim minorities in Pakistan and India respectively were implicated within such projects.58

The rehabilitation of the refugees from East and West Pakistan has occupied the central space within academic research in India. However rehabilitation efforts of both states operated not only through relief and economic resources to re-establish refugees as citizens, but also through the requisition and protection of evacuee property which aimed to induce refugees to return to their ancestral homes.

Both India and Pakistan established complex structures headed by a Custodian General59 in each country to protect minority properties and guaranteed the return of such property to the rightful owners upon their return. Both states agreed to set up Evacuee Property Management

Boards in the areas of East and West Bengal that had experienced mass migration.60 It was clearly stipulated that these Boards would function only on the definite request of individual property owners. However, such ‘management’ of property soon became intertwined with the nation-building project, especially in East Pakistan where forthcoming Requisition of Property

Acts would influence protection of evacuee property.61 Through the operations of these laws

58 Vazira Zamindar examines the promulgation and operation of Evacuee property Laws in Punjab and their effects on Muslim property in India. See Vazira Zamindar, Divided Families.

59 In response to incidents of looting and illegal occupations of houses left behind by evacuees, the Joint Defence Council in 29 August 1947, created the office of the ‘Custodian of Refugee’s Property’ to protect the properties of the displaced. ‘The Property of Refugees’, Minutes of the Joint Defense Council, 29 August, 1947, MP File 128, OIOC, London.

60 Inter=Dominion Conference, 6-15 December 1948, New Delhi, reproduced in Muhammad Ghulam , Minority Politics in Bangladesh (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1980), 100-05.

61 Restricted access to sources in the National Archives of India in Delhi and the police records of the Intelligence Bureau in Calcutta have prevented a detailed examination of how the Evacuee Property legislation operated and affected the lives of the Muslim minority in West Bengal. However, a recent article on the condition of Muslim minorities in West Bengal is provides an excellent description on the marginalization of the community. See Joya Chatterji, “Of Graveyards and Ghettos,” 222-249.

142 both States sought to quantify loyalty to the nation by associating it closely to property ownership.

This section focuses on the controversial legislation surrounding the operation of

Requisition of Property Acts in East Pakistan between 1948 and 1965 as a template for examining the dynamic processes of identity formation. The situation in East Pakistan is significant for several reasons. First, the requisition of houses was embedded within the larger project of nation building. The property left by evacuees became a crucial focal point in the requisitioning process. Second, the successful operation of the legislation called for an explicit demonstration of the citizen’s loyalty to the state and the nation. Authorities interpreted any refusal on the part of the property owners to comply with the regulations as being anti national.

Third, during the two decades after the Partition, the laws governing the requisition of evacuee property changed radically. By 1965, what had begun as legal protection of evacuee property had metamorphosed into a mechanism that enabled the complete appropriation of the property. Not surprisingly, East Pakistani citizens, especially those belonging to the minority Hindu community, perceived these regulations as forms of state intervention that robbed them not only of residential space but also of ownership rights. Minority Hindu citizens who continued to reside and maintain ties with their ancestral homes, identified their citizenship within the East

Pakistan state with such physical ties. Requisitioning of houses where some family members resided was then perceived as the state’s lack of faith in its minority citizens or as attempts to oust them. In fact both the East Pakistan state and its minority Hindu citizens identified property- ownership as proof of citizenship. But the requisition process complicated such identifications.

Initially to be in effect from 1948 until 1951, the East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of

Property Act (Act XIII of 1948) gave the provincial government power to acquire on either a

143 temporary or permanent basis any property it considered necessary for the establishment of offices and residences for the officials of the new state. Hindu political leaders in East Bengal such as Monoranjan Dhar, Pravash Chandra Lahiry and Ganendra Chandra Bhattacharjee strongly criticized the Act as a tool of minority persecution both in the East Bengal Legislative

Assembly and the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan.62 By 1951, authorities admitted to misjudging the provisional aspect of the law. In a private memo the Joint Secretary of the

Finance and Revenue Department (Requisition) admitted that the estimate of three years had not been adequate to rebuilding the Provincial and Central government buildings. He indicated that

“it is found now that schemes for construction of permanent buildings for their offices and officers have not been taken up seriously yet by many of the Departments concerned.”63 Further, the memo continued,

About 5,000 premises have already been requisitioned in the province and demands are still coming from different Government departments for further requisitioned accommodation. But there is no scope for further requisition in any district. All the available accommodation has already been requisitioned and there is on the other hand, persistent demand and clamour from the owners of the requisitioned houses specially from returned emigrants, the Muhajirs (Muslim refugees from India) who have acquired houses here by purchase or by exchange with their residential house in West Bengal and the business community for immediate release of the houses here by purchase or by exchange with their residential house in West Bengal and the business community for immediate release of the houses for their own residence and business purposes. In most cases their demands are found to quite reasonable and equitable and a great hardship is being caused to them by the operation of the Requisition Proceedings.64

62 Assembly Proceedings, Official Report, EBLA, Third Session, Vol. 3, No. 4, 55-73; Also CAP Debates, Vol. 1(8 and 9), March 1948, 219, 286 quoted in M. G. Kabir, Minority Politics in Bangladesh, 20.

63 Memo no. 6127 (50), 18 July 1951, File: 1L-3 of 1951 B Proceedings 272, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, Government of East Bengal, May 1952.

64 Ibid.

144 Given that such a situation was “detrimental to the normal development of the province,” authorities directed civil departments and private companies to build alternative accommodations within the next six months.

Such a short time limit was unrealistic and the East Bengal authorities decided to continue the earlier law under a new name and with slight modifications in its terms of operation.

Under the East Bengal Evacuee Property (Restoration of Possession) Act 1951 a person

(including his legal heirs) who was ordinarily resident of East Bengal and left for any part of

India owing to the communal disturbances or fear thereof after August 15, 1947 would be considered an “evacuee.”65 An “evacuee” was a “person ordinarily resident in East Bengal, who owing to communal disturbances, or fear thereof leaves or has, on or after prescribed date, left

East Bengal for any part of India and includes the legal heirs of such person.”66 The East Bengal authorities neatly classified the property belonging to an evacuee as “moveable” and

“immoveable” items. This law remained in force from 1951 ostensibly to protect and manage the property of those evacuees, mainly minority Hindus, who had left the country. The Government of East Bengal set up an Evacuee Management Committee that could take charge of any abandoned property, either on the basis of an application from the owner or by its own volition.

This Committee had the authority to grant leases or to rent such properties as it deemed necessary. For the first time, the district civil court was restricted from challenging any order or any action that the Committee undertook.

65 Ashraf Mohammad, Evacuee & rehabilitation laws, containing up to date central & provincial acts and ordinances ... with rehabilitation resettlement scheme Punjab ... & inter-domain agreements regarding evacuees (India & Pakistan) (: All Pakistan Legal Publications, 1957), 368.

66 East Bengal Evacuee Property (Restoration of Possession) Act, 1951, reproduced in Ashraf Mohammad, Evacuee & rehabilitation laws, 368-78. The prescribed date in this case was 1 January 1950.

145 Following the riots of 1964 which engulfed large sections of West Bengal and East

Pakistan including the capital cities of Calcutta and Dhaka, the Act emerged in the form of an ordinance under a new name, Disturbed Persons Rehabilitation Ordinance Act of 1964. Although enacted to provide quick aid to the victims of the riots, it also created restrictions on the transfer of immovable property belonging to the minority Hindus without permission from the East

Pakistan authorities. The seventeen deputy commissioners in the province were empowered to allow transfer of agricultural land amounting to only two acres or a maximum limit of one fourth of the total land holding.67 These government officials could sell other properties such as buildings but only at market prices not exceeding five thousand . The outbreak of war between India and Pakistan in 1965 resulted in the promulgation of the Defense of Pakistan

Ordinance (Ordinance XIII of 1965) that authorized the East Pakistani authorities to acquire emergency powers in the defense of the state. A key component under this ordinance was an executive order titled The Enemy Property (Custody and Registration) Order II of 1965.68 The immediate impact of this ordinance was on the properties of those minority citizens who had migrated to India, either temporarily or permanently, and had hitherto continued to retain their rights of ownership. All such property was now identified as ‘enemy property’ and rights of ownership was transferred to the state.69

67Abul Barkat Ed. An Inquiry into Causes and Consequences of Deprivation of Hindu Minorities in Bangladesh through the Vested Property Act: Framework for a Realistic Solution (Dhaka: PRIP Trust, 2000), 19-20.

68 India was declared an enemy country. The Custodian of Enemy Property took over all interests of the enemy (i.e. nationals/citizens of India, those residing in the territory occupied/captured/controlled by India) in firms and companies as well as in the lands and building situated in Pakistan for control or management. The benefits arising out of trade, business, or lands and buildings were not to go to the enemy, so as not to affect the security of the state of Pakistan or impair its defense in any manner.

69 The act had clear communal overtones. An official circular specified that Muslims residing in India including those who were Indian citizens would be excluded from the category of the ‘enemy’. Further, the properties of such Muslim owners would be handed over to them or their legal heirs upon demand. Although the war ended by September 1965, this act continued to be in force in later years and finally culminated in the Vested Property and Assets Order of 1972 passed by the new Bangladesh government.

146 Loyalty to the nation was an unwritten demand within these regulations. For example, by

1953 India and Pakistan had clearly defined the parameters of what constituted moveable property. Representatives of both governments in a meeting at Karachi decided that evacuees would be allowed to remove all “personal and household properties” to the other country without having to pay custom duties or export-import duties.70 However, evacuees could not move machinery or machine parts71, merchandise and trade goods, unsown cloth that was in excess of personal needs, cattle, cash in excess of permitted quantities and bullion. For all these items, evacuee owners were allowed six months from 1 March, 1954 within which to claim restoration or dispose of their moveable property within the country of their original residence.

Evacuees who carried more money than the stipulated amount were deemed to be shifting capital from one country to the other, sometimes perceived as a deliberate effort to sabotage East

Pakistan. Such suspicions were voiced even before the Partition. An article in the Dawn, a

Muslim League paper, published from Karachi, claimed that minority Hindu business men had shifted approximately two hundred crores in capital to India by early July 1947. The article identified this alleged transfer of capital as “Hindu hostility… motivated by a desire to hit the

Pakistan Exchequer by denying it a big source of revenue.”72 Although the prescribed amount of money changed over the years, the perception that the minorities were complicit in such “anti- national” transport of capital gained ground, especially as migration continued unabated over the next three decades.

70 Ibid, Press Note on Moveable Properties of Displaced Persons, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 562-3.

71 Ibid., Machines such as typewriters, sewing machines, bicycles, refrigerators, radios, cars, gramophones, musical instruments electrical goods and professional apparatus, instruments were allowed for removal to the other country, 562.

72 Dawn 11 July 1947.

147

Citizens or Evacuees

Although laws had clear definitions and guidelines for the protection of evacuee property, their terms were open to interpretation at the level of implementation. As the local authorities went about identifying ‘evacuee’ property and houses that could be requisitioned, they exercised their power and judgment that sometimes bordered on the indiscriminate. Identifying abandoned houses of minorities, as “evacuee” property and taking control of it “to protect” the property till the evacuee’s return was the first step in the requisition process. An appointed government official would personally inspect the property and conduct local enquiries regarding the owner’s intention to return home. Subsequently, the local authorities served a notice of requisition and earmarked the property to house government offices or officials.73 Such a notice of requisition did not require anyone to be present within the house as long as the notice was affixed “to some conspicuous part of the premises in which he [the owner] is known to have last resided or carried business or personally worked for gain.”74

Such a process did not provide any opportunity for direct enquiry of the evacuee owner’s intentions until the requisition notice had been served. The property owners were given only fifteen days from the publication of the requisition notice to appear before the local district authorities to state their objections to the requisition or to claim their compensatory rent for the property. Furthermore, the East Bengal government expected all minorities to return to their residences within six months.75 Failure to return was taken as a sign of the evacuees’

73 The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, 1948, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950, BNA.

74 Ibid.

75 The time limit of six months was measured from the date on which the Provincial Government made a proclamation in the Official Gazette that normal conditions had been restored in the province.

148 abandonment of their property and their preference for residence across the border. Manoranjan

Dhar, a member of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly, protested against the imposition of the time limit for the return of evacuees arguing that the essence of the Bill “is how to get evacuees back.” Moreover, he warned, “some evacuees who want to come back to East Bengal may find that they have no accommodation to take shelter, because most of their houses have been requisitioned or disposed of.”76 Anticipating the bureaucratic hassles that they would have to undergo to regain ownership of their requisitioned property, many Hindu owners began to entrust their houses to the care of close relatives, tenants or caretakers. Although clear guidelines prevented evacuee property from being requisitioned if family members or caretakers were present, a definite disjuncture between prescription and practice existed.

Complaints against the wholesale requisitioning of property quickly accumulated after the promulgation of the law in 1948. Sometimes East Pakistan authorities requisitioned houses when the owners had gone to India to attend social functions or for medical treatment. For instance, Gour Chandra Chakrabarty, a retired government servant of undivided India, who had become a pensioner of the Pakistan government after 1947, found his only residence in

Kaliajury, requisitioned during a temporary absence. 77 His petition began with the assertion that he was a “loyal subject of the Pakistan government” and outlined in detail the reasons for his absence. He had gone to in West Bengal to perform the marriage of one of his daughters, and subsequently had become ill and vacationed in , Orissa, to recover.

Meanwhile, the local authorities had requisitioned his house, allegedly without notice. When

76Assembly Proceedings Official Report, Vol. 3, No. 4 EBLA, Third Session, 5 April 1949, Dacca: East Bengal Government Press), 57.

77 Petition, 15 February 1949, File: Tr-9/49 B Proceedings 966-981. Finance and Revenue Department, August 1954, BNA.

149 Chakrabarty returned to his home, it had already been allotted to a government servant. He assured the district authorities that he intended to “spend the rest of his life at his village home at

Kaliajury and God willing, to die here.” Chakrabarty hoped that such a promise of continued residence would elicit a favorable response. However, after an enquiry, the district magistrate noted that, “It does not appear that he [Chakrabarty] has any bonafide intention to stay in

Comilla as it is understood from local evidence that he had removed all his moveable belongings to West Bengal.”78 An additional factor meditating against the return of his property was that both of Chakrabarty’s sons worked in West Bengal. The house remained requisitioned and probably Chakrabarty was forced to live with his sons in West Bengal.

Again in 1950, immediately after the Khulna Barisal riots, another petitioner found his house in Kishoreganj, Mymensingh district, requisitioned when he temporarily visited Calcutta to for medical treatment. Ironically, Suresh C Barman and his brother K. C. Barman, the deputy secretary of Land and Land Revenue Department in West Bengal, a department intimately connected with refugee rehabilitation and requisitioning of property, jointly owned the house.

While Barman had opted to join the civil service in West Bengal after 1947, Suresh had continued to reside in their ancestral home. When Suresh and his wife went to Calcutta for the latter’s medical treatment, local authorities deemed the house to be vacant and available to be requisitioned even though the couple had left a caretaker, Sivacharan Das.79 Although the East

Pakistani authorities in an attempt to normalize the situation after the riots had promised the

78 Ibid., District Magistrate to Deputy Secretary, GOEB.

79 Barman also alleged “50 houses in Kishoreganj, about 30 houses at Bajitpur and a large number of houses in Netrokona and Mymensingh have been similarly requisitioned inspite of the fact that most of them were occupied by the owners or their members/men.” File: My-55/50 B Proceedings 518-529, Revenue (Requisitioning) Department, August, 1954, BNA.

150 returning evacuees80 that their houses would be de-requisitioned, Suresh Barman did not regain his house. The sub divisional officer of Kishoreganj reported, “The brothers are evacuees… the story that Suresh went only for the treatment of his wife cannot be believed. Not a single member of the family was in the house.”81 Continued physical residence in one’s property was the required proof of ownership.

These complaints were not protests against the law itself. Rather the petitioners challenged the discretionary implementation of the law when officials identified occupied houses as evacuee property. Another petition highlights the arbitrariness of the requisition process.

Nirmal Kumar Choudhury, a correspondent for the Ananda Bazar Patrika who was stationed in

Patna, read about the requisition of his property in the newspaper. The Hindustan Standard in

July 1950 reported that,

With 24 hours notice the residential house of Shri Bimal Kumar Choudhury of Panchbibi (Bogra) has been requisitioned by the Pakistan Government. Bimal Babu’s mother and sister are living in the house. They have got a few hundred (around 82.6 pounds) of paddy in their ‘gola.’ They and the other gentlemen of the locality prayed for time but the Circle Officer who came to take possession of the house is said to have given them a rude reply advising them to move the higher authorities.82

To the readers in India, Choudhury’s predicament was yet another sign at best of East Pakistani

State’s inefficiency and at worst another instance of minority persecution. However, in his letter to his friend A. M. A. Azim of the of Pakistan in Dacca, Nirmal Choudhury showed complete faith in the process that in his view had mistakenly requisitioned an occupied

80 In Press Note issued from Dacca in August 1950, the government of East Pakistan had assured minorities that “it is not the intention of government to requisition any houses in which the owner or relatives of the owner are still living, and if a migrant who has left after the disturbances wishes to come back to reside in the province, his house, if requisitioned by the government will be derequisitioned forthwith.” Ibid.

81 Extract from report of SDO Kishoreganj to District Magistrate Mymensingh, 19 August 1950, ibid.

82 HS, 12 July 1950.

151 house.83 He assured the authorities that his brother had temporarily gone to West Bengal for medical reasons and had already returned home. In this case, the problem arose from the government’s interpretation of “family” that did not take into account the presence of an extended family in residence.

A common thread that runs through these three petitions that represent more than a hundred retained in the files of the Revenue Department is the intentions to stay inspite of the political partition. Although many of these migrants may have in reality fled their homes in the wake of the riots and political uncertainty, their migration was temporary. Most of the petitions cited “medical leave” as the reason for their absence that implied the short-term nature of their decisions. The petitioners left behind family members or caretakers to prevent heir properties being declared “evacuee” property and they returned once they felt that the political climate had stabilized or their medical treatment was completed.

Further, there had been a tradition of migration from rural eastern Bengal to the urban centers of West Bengal, mainly Calcutta to obtain higher education or work.84 Although Partition divided this region into two new states, such patterns of temporary migration and divided families continued within the existing networks of kinship relations and economic associations.

Traditionally family members had continued to remain in the ancestral home while the urban educated males worked in western Bengal and returned home during family celebrations and religious holidays. After 1947 such patterns of mobility became invested with signs of

83 Br-24/50, B Proceedings, 3040-3046, Revenue (Requisition) Department, August 1954, BNA.

84 Several memoirs of well-known Bengali intellectuals allude to the traditional economic connections between eastern Bengal and Calcutta. See, Nirad C Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Bombay: Jaico, 1951);, Romanthan Athaba Bhimratipraptar Paracharitcharcha (Calcutta: Ananda Publishers, 1993).

152 citizenship whereby the very act of leaving one’s residence, for whatever the reason, was interpreted as intent to migrate.

The East Pakistan authorities faced with the scarcity of housing for their new government and its employees frequently assumed intent to evacuate as indication of permanent departure.85

The Government of Pakistan debated on creating a further category of ‘intending evacuees’, comprising of minorities whom officials perceived to be at risk of flight. To avoid being labeled as such, one had to provide a written statement of one’s intention to stay to local district authorities. The linkages between evacuee property and requisition of property ensured that the intentions to migrate continued to influence decisions of local authorities in East Bengal. The operation of the requisition laws created, sui generis, the category of “evacuees.”

Requisitioning property was a primary means by which resident/citizens became evacuees. When the evacuees returned and demanded their homes from the government, their requests became entangled within the nation building project and definition of national loyalty.

The issue debated within official circles was whether these returning evacuees were petitioning their homes for continued residence or for financial gain through the sale of their property to the highest bidder,86 or worse, as an attempt to somehow sabotage the state building process. The

East Pakistan government did de-requisition some property. But a substantial portion was not de- requisitioned because the government could not build alternative houses and office buildings as quickly as needed. Moreover, some officials in East Pakistan, thought that it was only a matter of time before the minority Hindu citizens migrated to India. During the riots of 1950, Lal

Roy, a resident of North Nawabpur in Dacca, had moved his family to another part of the city for

85 Constituent Assembly (Legislature) of Pakistan Debates, 6 April 1951, 897-923, Dhaka University Library, Dhaka.

86 File Da-321/50, B Proceedings 1574 – 1584, Revenue department, Requisition, August 1954, BNA.

153 safety. After the political environment had stabilized, he found that the Government had requisitioned his house. To make matters worse, some unauthorized muhajirs were living in his house. After petitioning for de-requisitioning, he succeeded in obtaining his residence.87

However, in his report, A Khaleque, the local police sub-inspector who had conducted the local enquiry to establish the validity of Roy’s petition, suggested that “Order may kindly be passed to return the house to the petitioner after taking an agreement that if he goes away to West Bengal, the house may be surrendered to the Govt [sic].”88 Therefore requisitioning houses of Hindu residents was one step in a process seen as leading to ultimate evacuation.

The needs of the state sometimes circumvented the rights of ownership as properties that were not ‘empty’ were served with requisition notices. The petition of the Sutradhar family in

Comilla illustrates the complexities involved within the process at the local level. The story began in October 1948 when the district government at Comilla requisitioned the Royal Hotel, situated in the town center, in order to establish a police club within its premises. Prabud

Chandra Sengupta, the owner, filed an objection towards this requisition noting that although the authorities had provided him with an alternative building for his hotel, relocation would be a financial drain. He emphasized that his boarders, both Muslims and Hindus, were already in residence and it would be difficult to move them.89 Superficially here is another instance of the local authorities acting arbitrarily. However, matters were complicated when the district authorities requisitioned the house that the Sutradhar family jointly owned, as the alternative accommodation for the Royal Hotel. Not only had the family been residing in their house, they

87 File: Da-327/50, B Proceedings 1585-1599, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, August 1954, BNA.

88 Report dated 2 August 1950, ibid.

89 Petition to Deputy Secretary, Revenue Department (Requisition) dated 31 October 1948, File: Tr 1/49, B Proceedings, 938-954, Revenue Department, Requisition Branch, July 1954, BNA.

154 also conducted a successful timber and furniture business from within the compound of the house. In her petition protesting the requisition, Ashubala Sutradhar, noted that she had to support her ailing husband and her 80-year-old mother in law, who were both residents of the house in dispute. Moreover, their second house, which was situated outside of Comilla

Township, had already been requisitioned earlier, leaving the family without any residence.

Ashubala also sent her petition against the requisitioning to the district minority committee, seeking some political support. The district authorities discredited her petition arguing that her husband’s illness “is neither recent or acute. At least it has not prevented him from moving about.” In addition, the land acquisition officer reported that the Sutradhars had begun their business after the requisitioning notice had been served “for the purposes of defeating the requisition.” For local officials, her petition was yet another instance of minority citizens raising objections on “false or fictitious grounds” to disrupt the formation of the new government.90

Fortunately for Ashubala, Tafazzal Ali, then the minister in charge of the Revenue

Department, took up her case. Ali noted that the East Pakistan government had issued a ban against the requisition of houses for non-officials. The district authorities should have applied for permission from the government before they decided to requisition Ashubala’s house for relocating Prabud Sengupta, the owner of Royal Hotel. Concluding that the district magistrate had acted in a prejudicial manner, Ali approved the de-requisitioning of the house.

One did not have to be a property owner for the long arm of the requisition law to displace a minority resident. Amrita Lal Bhowmick, an accountant in the Chittaranjan Cotton

90 The district magistrate wrote, “We are facing the same difficulty in taking possession of the houses under requisition. There are 402 cases of requisition of which only 80% of the houses were taken over possession and the rest could not be taken over due to objections after objections on false or fictitious grounds. It is the habitual tendency of the owners of the houses under requisition, inspite of realizing that these houses were being requisitioned under the painful necessity of the government to provide officers with accommodation.” Ibid.

155 Mills in Dhaka and a tenant in a non-owner occupied family house in Gandaria, Dhaka, found his quarters requisitioned in July 1950. 91 He had been a resident in Dhaka since 1947 and had been residing in the house with his family. Bhowmick, a relative of the owner had been allowed the use of the property while the owner, searched for a suitable property to exchange or a buyer for his property. On the particular day of the requisitioning, authorities had arrived at the house while Bhowmick was at his office, served his maid the notice of requisitioning and locked up the house. When he returned home, Bhowmick could not enter his house, nor could he collect his clothes or money. Bhowmick successfully petitioned to the higher authorities and the property was temporarily derequisitioned.92

A narrative of suffering and a debate on the rights of residence was embedded within this success story. When his house was requisitioned, Bhowmick had supplied the authorities with rent and municipal tax receipts and provided details on his ration card that proved his tenancy.

However, the authorities concluded that his personal relationship with the owner made him a caretaker of the house rather than a tenant. This was a critical distinction. At one level, such difference alluded to the fact that the actual owner had intentions to evacuate providing the pretext for requisitioning. Second, the differentiation between Bhowmick as caretaker rather than a tenant enabled the local authorities to project themselves as the official custodians of this evacuee property. Consequently, in this particular case, the act of requisition would not involve the disenfranchising a tenant.

The Government of East Bengal had defined guidelines for the compensation of both moveable and immoveable property that was requisitioned. Both the government and the owner

91File: Da-302/50, B Proceedings 1550-1557, Revenue Requisition Department, August 1954, BNA.

92 Ibid.

156 were to agree on the compensation. If such agreement was not reached, the East Bengal government would nominate a person having expert knowledge on the property to be acquired.93

The owner could also appoint his own assessor and a government- appointed judge would arbitrate the case in the district high court. The market value of the property was fixed to equal to its value on or before 14th June 1947. This assessment applied to all houses within a radius of twenty miles from the New Government House at Ramna, in the capital of Dacca, and within twenty miles from the Court in the district of Chittagong. However, the rules for compensation were not clear for requisitioned houses that were beyond the twenty-mile radius of these two cities and in other districts of the province.

Over the years it became difficult to transfer the rent to the owner, who may have moved to India, then the rent had to be channeled through bureaucratic institutions that regulated the transfer of money between the two countries. For example, in his petition for adequate compensation for his house in Dacca, N. C. Chakravarti, a civil servant in the West Bengal government and then a resident of Calcutta, noted that he had been earning Rs 50 as rent before his house had been requisitioned.94 He protested against the official estimation of rent at Rs. 30 which, along with an exponential rise in municipal taxes after the Partition, meant that he “was denied any practical benefit.” Moreover, he requested the government to send his rent by money order to Calcutta since the “cost of the journey will exceed the compensation.” Although his rent was revised and raised to Rs. 50 it is unclear whether the East Bengal government was prompt in sending any money order to Calcutta. Most likely, Chakravarti, like the cases cited above, had to wait years to obtain any compensation for his property.

93 The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, 1948, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950, BNA.

94 Da- 52/49, B Proceedings, 99-101, Revenue (Acquisition) Department, July 1954, Revenue, BNA.

157 Some minority Hindus did not perceive any problems between their citizenship in one country and ownership of property in another. Some of those who had moved permanently to

India now requested the Indian government to ensure that they received compensation from the

East Pakistan government for their requisitioned property. An anonymous letter writer outlined his grievances and demands to the editor of Hindustan Standard thus, “Our house was taken up in August 1947, another August has passed and the year is drawing to a close, yet we have not received any sum by way of compensation.”95 After sending a number of letters to the East

Bengal government enquiring how and when the owner could collect compensation, he had received a short letter noting that the rent had been fixed at Rs 25 instead of the earlier rent of

Rs. 40. The writer exhorted the West Bengal government that “ It is the incumbent duty of the state to offer protection to our properties in foreign lands i.e. Pakistan. This is not a new or abnormal demand, nor is it being prompted by sabotage motive [sic].” Rather, the writer urged the West Bengal government to advise all the new citizens to apply for compensation to the High

Commissioner of Pakistan to assuage any suspicions of disloyalty.

Although the requisition drive and petitions protesting its operation created a space for the articulation of citizenship rights through ownership and proof of residency, the issue of compensation introduced a new factor in the negotiations. This new element concerned the rights of arbitration as some minority Hindus began to send their petitions to the Indian High

Commission at Dacca. East Pakistani authorities viewed such actions on the part of their citizens as undermining their authority. , the Chief Secretary to the East Bengal Government, in his letter to Muhammad Ikramullah, Foreign Secretary of Pakistan, noted, “There is an almost

95 HS, 24 November 1948, 4. The concern over properties left behind and whether they would get any compensation was central in the minds of those who migrated to India and reported regularly in Indian newspapers. See, HS, 28 June 1948, 4; 3 September 1948, 7; 8 November 1948, 4.

158 universal tendency on the part of the Hindus in this province to look upon the Deputy High

Commissioner as a sort of appellate authority and a protector of their interests - an impression which the Deputy High Commissioner himself does little or nothing to discourage.”96 Ahmed was only stating what was a common perception at the time. He went on to clearly stake a claim on East Bengal’s minority citizens by urging the Indian High Commission to forward only cases that concerned Indian citizens. On his part, Santosh Basu, the Deputy High Commissioner of

India, clarified that most of the petitions directed towards Indian authorities in Dhaka were from those who had migrated to India and their petitions were postmarked from that side of the border.

Further, he cited the recent Inter Dominion agreement reached between representatives of both countries in Delhi which provided space for both countries to create “ possible conditions which would infuse confidence into the minds of those citizens who have migrated to the other dominion with a view to their return to their original homes.”97 Hence, according to Basu, rather than undermine East Pakistan, in taking up cases of non-payment of compensation, Indian authorities were only assisting evacuees to enable them to return to their original homes.

However, for Ahmed, East Pakistan’s jurisdiction continued to extend to those who had migrated to India but not yet adopted Indian nationality. This debate on rights over minority citizens was crucial to the evolving self-definition of both India and Pakistan.

A Discourse of Dispossession: Religion vs. Citizenship

The arbitrariness of the requisition operation had the immediate effect of producing a perception of minority oppression. The fact that most requisitioned houses belonged to Hindus

96 Letter dated 7 March 1949, File: 11-241, B Proceedings 8-9, bundle 49 Home Political Department August 1949, BNA.

97 Ibid.

159 led to the belief that the East Pakistan state was deliberate in its attempts to dispossess its minority citizens.98 For example, Bimalananda Dasgupta, the ex-chairman of the Dhaka

Municipality, in outlining the different problems generated because of requisition laws, stated

“Enough has been said and ventilated through the press over this procedure of the Pakistan government to oust people who sincerely want to cling to their paternal homesteads but it seems yet very little or no impression has been made on the authorities.”99 Similarly Samar Guha claimed, “ For East Bengal, Pak [sic] Government is not likely to undertake any large scale scheme for house building as requisitioning of Hindu houses serves their double purposes, ousting of undesirable middle class Hindus from the urban areas and housing the Muslims in them.”100 This hypothesis of calculated dispossession found ready reception within the evolving discourse of persecution that by now included protests against gun control, forcible donations for the Jinnah Fund, and arbitrary jailing of some prominent leaders on charges of anti-state activity.

The East Bengal government, aware of the dangerous potential for within the requisition process, had clearly outlined in its promulgations that places of worship would be out of bounds of requisitioning. Thus while the government had full powers to requisition any property deemed necessary for state building, it also provided that “no property used by the public for the purpose of religious worship shall be requisitioned.”101 In

98 Shyamaprasad Mookerjee was the most vocal critic of the alleged efforts of the East Pakistani state to “squeeze out” Hindus. See his letter to B. C Roy, 22nd August 1950, SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File no, 39, Index vol. 1. Interestingly, he also used the same term in his appeals for complete rehabilitation of refugees from East Pakistan. In this case, he interpreted the limited efforts of the Indian government towards rehabilitating Hindu refugees from East Pakistan as “efforts to squeeze (them) out back into Pakistan.” See his note “Statistics on Migration,” SPM Papers, File No. 33, SPM Papers, “Refugees and minorities,” 1949-50, NMML.

99 HS, 19 December 1947.

100 Samar Guha, Non Muslims Behind the Curtain, 22.

101 The East Bengal (Emergency) Requisition of Property Ordinance, drafted by the Legislative and Judicial Department, Legislative Branch, East Bengal Government, B Proceedings 23, Legislative, May 1950.

160 their multifarious attempts to counter the requisitioning process, minorities found this clause useful as it became common practice to associate one’s residence with one’s places of worship.

For instance, when Nagendra Saha, a resident of Jessore, sent an express telegram. in March

1949, to the chief secretary of East Pakistan, he worded his protest thus, “ Our residential building at Lakshmipasa with family deity installed temple inside for years requisitioned under orders of district magistrate for circle officers residence daily worshipping by permanently retained purohit [priest] will be stopped family members stranded without shelter pray intervention.”102 Saha’s telegram identifies the loss of access to the ‘family deity’ as primary reason for his objections to the requisitioning order. In an attached letter, Saha also pointed out a set of other grounds for objection such as continued residence of family members and that the family had no other alternative residence in the area. In support of Saha’s petition, the President of the District Muslim League, Narail, Maulavi Abdul Aziz gathered more than twenty-five signatures from prominent men of the area, most of who belonged to the local branches of the

Muslim League. Aziz, in his petition to the Tafazzal Ali, who was also the Chairman of the East

Pakistan Minority Board, noted that due to the requisition order, not only had Nagendra Saha and his family been left without a residence, but they also had no access to the “Siva temple” situated within their house. Such a situation “had created great unrest amongst the Hindu and Muslim citizens of the locality.”103 Thus Aziz urged Ali to take action in favor of the derequisitioning of

Saha’s house in the interest of maintaining communal .

102 File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.

103 Ibid., Letter 8 March 1949. Translations mine.

161 Saha’s example was one among many instances of disputed requisitions.104 The official response was to discredit the grounds of his petitions. Local authorities reported that only three members of the Saha family were residing at the house at the time of requisition, “ the other 4 brothers, Haren Babu, Jiten Babu, Anil Babu and Susil Babu were all living in the Indian Union with their family and all belongings since the birth of Pakistan.”105 In the eyes of officials this fact of a divided family established intent to migrate on the part of Nagendra Saha and accordingly justified the requisition. To add insult to injury, the officials also stated that contrary to rules, the family had removed a DBBL gun and a radio to the Indian union, and upon being informed about the requisition order, the family imported a “good number of women and children”106 to contest the requisition order. Thus not only had the Saha family been engaged in what could be interpreted as seditious acts, but had moved family members to their residence for the purposes of contesting the official order. A confidential memo to the district magistrate of

Jessore argued that “there is no temple in the house in the true sense but there is a small memorial of the deceased parents of Nagen Babu, where photos and a siva linga are placed.”107

Since the memorial was situated away from the main building, local authorities proposed fencing off the area to separate it from the requisitioned house and thereby ensure continuation of worship. Such a resolution, would answer any contentions on grounds of religious rights and still allow for the requisition of the house. Inspite of multiple petitions, the requisition of Saha’s house remained in force in 1949.

104 See files of the Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, volumes 1-4, BNA.

105 Memo No. 342, 13 April 1949, File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.

106 Ibid.

107 Memo No. 113C, dated 26 March 1949, File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.

162 Religion and requisition became visibly entangled with well-publicized cases such as the one concerning the requisition of property of the Raja of Bhawal.108 East Pakistani authorities had requisitioned the Jaidebpur in January 1948 to accommodate the Office of the

Government Forms and Stationeries. Although Kumar Roy , the Raja of Bhawal, had objected to the requisition claiming, “there are temples of our family deities in different parts of the Palace compound,” his petition to Nazimuddin was not successful. Given that a requisition was fait accompli, Ram Narayan then called “on your [Nazimuddin’s] personal assurance as a premier, for protection of our interests, during our last meeting, we as loyal subjects of the state co-operated with the government and handed over the possession of the rooms requisitioned in the Palace.” However, problems cropped up immediately after the requisition because, contrary to expectations, sections of the Palace was also converted into a boarding house for the employees of the Forms and Stationeries Department. RamNarayan claimed that the occupants “often cause troubles during the performance of the daily pujas of the deities,”109 and also “do not take care of the house and owing to their willful negligence the

Palace has been greatly damaged and made filthy.”110 Thus not only had the East Bengal government reneged on its promise that despite the requisition, normal religious activities at the

Palace would continue but had also used the building for different purposes than stated earlier.

The allegation that the boarders were deliberate in their neglect of the Palace can be read as an expression of communal antagonism. Such communal rhetoric may seem misplaced given

108 The was situated 22 miles north of Dhaka city, within the Madhupur Forest region. It was one of the largest zamindari estates in Dhaka although much of the land was not as productive as those of the riverine estates. For more details see, Partha Chatterjee, A Princely Imposter, The Strange and Universal History of the Kumar of Bhawal (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 15-31.

109 The main cause of complaint was the earlier communal issue of playing of music during daily worship. File Jr- 21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.

110 Ibid.

163 the demographic statistics of the area. Muslims comprised nearly sixty percent of the population and the rest were of lower caste Hindu peasants, rajbanshis and a tribal group called banua.111

But given the active mobilization of lower caste groups along communal lines before the

Partition, RamNarayan’s letter and newspaper reports easily made the connections between communal identity and citizenship in East Pakistan.

Matters came to a head when the Ananda Bazar Patrika reported an incident of cow slaughter (Bhowal Prashadey Garu Jabai) within the Palace grounds. The report also alleged that on June 8, 1948 “the meat of the slaughtered cow was cooked and served to the Muslim boarders. In this way, they [the boarders] had defiled the most ancient Hindu zamindari. The adjacent pond, whose water was used for the Puja, had also been defiled.”112 This report projected all the cultural and religious fears of the Hindus onto a physical institution. The “cow slaughter” incident gained additional importance because of where it took place and became symbolic of all real and perceived minority persecution within East Bengal. Accordingly, the

Ananda Bazar Patrika reported that the “Hindus of Bhowal have again become frustrated and panicky” as a result of this incident.113 For Ram Narayan, this incident provided the pretext to request the de-requisitioning on the grounds that the East Bengal state had reneged on its promises to guarantee minority religious rights.

After investigating incident, M. Siddiqui, the Under Secretary to the Government of

Pakistan at Karachi, confirmed that some “laborers” had indeed slaughtered a cow within the palace premises.114 They had been “severely warned” against repeating such an incident.

111 Chatterjee, Princely Imposter, 16.

112 File Jr-21/49 B Proceedings 737-742, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department, July 1954, BNA.

113 Ibid.

114 Memo dated 22 January 1949, ibid.

164 However, Siddiqui perceived anti-state rhetoric within the complaint made by the manager of the estate and noted,

Either allegations made by the manager of the estate, as indicated in the enclosure to the above letter, regarding interference by the Press staff with religious performance during Puja, conversion of major portions of the palace into a boarding house, and damage to the property are not correct and appear to have been brought up along with the 'cow' incident merely for the sake of propaganda against Pakistan government. The Pakistan government therefore refutes these allegations and would request the provincial government to send a note to this effect to the property owner, if there is no objection.115

Any complaint, which centered on minority and hence religious issues, was, as in this case, interpreted as a criticism of the legitimacy of the Pakistan state.

As the East Pakistan state tried to resolve the debate on whether the state would be a democracy or theocracy, the requisition process, more than any other factor linked the issues of citizenship and religious rights. Notions of belonging and citizenship were embedded within one’s place of residence in the pre-partition era. However, specifically for the minorities, the requisition process intruded and tore apart this association. In such circumstances, their petitions interwove their dispossession within rhetoric of loss of religious rights and diminished cultural citizenship within the nation. Most petitions thus repeatedly identified individual homes as the abode of the kuladevata (family deity).116 Thus when Amrita Lal Bhowmick protested against the requisitioning of his house, he added that “the room in which sits my family deity has also been locked up and I have thus been stopped from my daily Puja.”117 Not only had he become displaced within his original locality but his words reflected a cultural dispossession.

115 Ibid., Emphasis added.

116 See, Finance and Revenue (Requisition) Department Files: Da-346/50, B August 1954, Proceedings, 1647-1654; Da-71/50, B July 1954, Proceedings, 271-292; and Home Political Files: 1I-293 of 1948, B May 1950, Proceedings, 16-24.

117 File: Da-302/50, B Proceedings 1550-1557, Revenue Requisition, August 1954, BNA.

165 Why did minorities intersperse their complaints with such religious associations? These demands may indicate a continuation of Hindu communalism at play. However, in the project of creating national identities both India, a declared secular state, and Pakistan, an Islamic

Republic, continued to identify their citizens in terms of “majority” and “minority” citizens.

Rather than an inherent identification with religion, the petitioners’ use of religion was a tactical measure to strengthen their claims within the dynamic political and social environment after the

Partition. This alliance between religious identity and residence contributed to the discourse of that circumscribed the nation-building project in both countries.

It maybe fruitful to examine whether the East Pakistan state made any deliberate attempts to dispossess its minority citizens. Certain elements within the local administration definitely harbored anti-minority attitudes and/or interpreted the law to justify indiscriminate requisition.

However, in general the East Pakistan government was fully aware of the ramifications of such requisitions where the majority of property owners were Hindu, especially in the new capital of

Dacca. In general, the government recruitment targeted all property owners irrespective of their religion. The B Proceedings of the Revenue and Finance Department, which contain petitions relating to the requisition process, reveal that several Muslim property owners faced similar problems to those of their Hindu counterparts. The following table gives a sample distribution of requisitioned houses between 1947 through 1950 in the three main administrative divisions of

Chittagong, Rajshahi and Dacca.118

Hindu Muslim

Chittagong 487 156

Rajshahi 105 23

Dacca 345 57

118 Thanks to Irfat Ara for helping me with the compilation.

166 Source: Finance and Revenue (Requisition) files, Bundles 1-5, BNA.

The above table does not aim to be a comprehensive account nor does it include these petitions surviving in official files uncritically. However, it indicates that the requisition process targeted houses rather than religions. The needs of state formation rather than minority persecution accounted for its arbitrariness. The Pakistan state viewed these houses as potential infrastructure that could speed up the establishment of the new nation. However, the owners of these properties regarded these spaces as their symbolic homeland and private property to which they alone could stake a claim. Thus embedded within these petitions are the negotiations between personal and official claims to what constitutes ownership. Homeowners, irrespective of their religion, viewed the state’s inefficiency with regard to paying rent or the very randomness of the requisition process as an infringement of their citizenship rights. For minority Hindus, as the table indicates, such insecurities, generated by the requisition process, easily dovetailed into the existing rhetoric of minority persecution. Simultaneously, these petitions, in addressing their grievances to the Pakistani authorities, acknowledged the legitimacy of the new State rather than undermine it.

Conclusion

Being members of the minority community was nothing new for Hindus and Muslims in undivided Bengal. Prior to 1947, the minority experience was focused on the political sphere in demands for representation in provincial and local legislative bodies. After Partition, the new nation states adopted policies geared towards defining who would be their citizens. The minorities came under special focus as articulators of a not only each nation’s secular façade but also as counterweight for mistreatment of minorities on the other side. Moreover, minorities and

167 their concerns were the primary basis of inter Dominion communications between India and

Pakistan in the early years after the Partition.

Although a large number of minorities moved across the border to join the majority on the other side after Partition, many did so with the intention of returning. Even when they migrated across the border, they continued to keep ties of landownership and kinship relations.

Further, a large number continued to remain in their ancestral residences. That the Bengal

Partition engendered a chronic refugee migration lasting nearly two decades was a response to official state policies after the Partition. Changing patterns of border control, introduction of new systems of surveillance such as the passport and visa scheme, and the arbitrary requisitioning of property emphasized, especially to the minorities on both sides of the border, that these restrictions would cease only with migration. Paradoxically, although prominent leaders in both countries urged each other to create conditions of safety and security in the minds of their minorities, their efforts at nation building were counter productive to such rhetoric. The evacuee property and requisitioning laws in East Pakistan are a prime example of such a process. The physical dispossession engendered by these laws fused easily with incidents of small-scale violence to contribute towards a growing rhetoric of minority persecution. Media depictions of minorities as ‘fifth columnists’ added fuel to the fire making it difficult for minorities to remain in their homes.

Questions on loyalty towards one’s nation was laid first squarely at the feet of minority citizens in each country. However, migration did not provide any solution to their difficulties. As

“refugees” they not only had to adjust to alien environments and indifferent communities, but also had to continuously struggle with the State for legal recognition as citizen.

168 Chapter 5

Ecology of Fear: Violence in Post-Partition Bengal

Bengal remained relatively peaceful during and after the announcement to partition the province. Although the Noakhali and Calcutta riots of 1946 provided the immediate backdrop to the decision to partition, the division itself witnessed no major incidents of communal skirmishes as in Punjab. The announcement that Bengal would be divided on the basis of communal majority population, and the later publication of the Boundary Award was received with mixed feelings1 but did not result in any large-scale violence in the region. Then why examine violence in the Partition of Bengal?

This chapter analyses the nature of violence and its representations to underline the continuing effect of Partition as a process on the lives of Hindu and Muslim minorities which influenced their decisions to seek security across the border. Violence in the region manifested itself through stray incidents of stabbing, looting, abduction of women and murder. The continuation of such incidents in the years after the actual event of Partition threaded together the persistence of Partition in the lives of minorities on both sides of the border. If Partition is viewed as a historical process, rather than an event with a specific date, then such incidents of violence and their narrative representations acquire a significant role in the process of identity formation in the new nation states. What differentiated and identified these incidents from pre-

Partition incidents of communal violence was that such acts sought to identify Hindus and

Muslims in East Pakistan and India respectively as minorities and question their legitimacy as

1 Anti-Partitionists such as H.S. Suhrawardy, Sarat Bose and Abul Hashim evoked the common Bengali socio cultural ties and advocated for an independent Bengal. The supporters of Partition comprising the bulk of the Congress leaders and the Hindu Mahasabha argued that the violence of 1946 had rendered these ties asunder. They claimed that the minority Hindus needed a ‘homeland’ appended to the Indian Union and separate from the proposed Pakistan.

169 citizens of the country of their residence. The continuance of such small scale and sporadic violence in East Pakistan and in West Bengal also contributed to the postcolonial debates on the practical interpretation of such categories as nationalism and secularism. Representations of such incidents in newspapers fixed minority identities as victims of majority-community violence.

Although some of these incidents of petty theft and loot involved for economic factors, their portrayal in the media immediately colored them with communal overtones.2 Even the riots of

1950, which began as a communist insurrection of a handful of peasants against the East

Pakistan state, were interpreted as communally inspired, and were quickly coded as communal riots in West Bengal. The aftermath of these riots witnessed a new peak in post Partition migration of minorities.

Violence during the process of Partition in Bengal needs to be examined for another reason. As an important corollary to any articulation of minority rights, demands of refugee rehabilitation and citizenship, representations of violence were a necessary ingredient in the narratives of victimhood. In the minds of insecure citizens, ‘threats’ of violence acted in similar ways as actual violence. National and family honor continued to be important signifiers influencing minorities in East Pakistan and India to decide to migrate even when there was no personal experience of physical abuse. Refugees, especially the Hindus from East Pakistan, tended to identify as incidents of violence those instances of transgression which not only targeted their physical bodies, but some thing even greater – their religion, culture, honor and the embodiment of all these – their women. Although official first information reports (FIR) on such small-scale incidents are still classified, available letters and memorandum from minorities,

2 For example, when a longstanding feud between two landlords in Nilambar Patty in Manickgunje, East Pakistan erupted again on February 29, 1948 with tenants of one attacking the tenants of the other, this incident was depicted as a ‘communal riot’ in some Indian newspapers. The East Bengal Government immediately issued a press report outlining that it was a local dispute with no communal aspects. ABP, 6 March 1948, 1.

170 propaganda leaflets, and newspaper reports represent such violence as ubiquitous in the lives of these minorities.

In their analyses of pre-Partition violence in Bengal, Suranjan Das and Patricia Gossman consider the historical trajectory, which culminated in the creation of political blocs of Hindus and Muslims on the eve of Partition. Das traces the changes in the nature of riots in Bengal between 1905 and 1947 from being relatively spontaneous and manifestations of class differences to being planned, organized and attaining an overtly communal tone.3 In his assessment of communal violence, he outlines the conjunction of elite and popular communalism, which he argues ultimately manifested itself through the Calcutta riots of 1946.

Patricia Gossman examines the means by which violence became ritualized and was constitutive of the process of identity formation in Bengal during the same period. She argues that in addition to colonial authorities, Hindu and Muslim political leaders were instrumental in articulating the narratives of communal riots by constructing “facts” out of every incident. Such representations through numerous repetitions helped to “freeze popular perceptions of identity”.4

Such “frozen” identities continued in the post Partition period but with a significant modification. Identities after the Partition, along with religion, had to incorporate ideals of citizenship. Although in theory each state could and did define their citizens by birth and by their willingness to continue to live in the region they found themselves in after Partition, in reality citizenship was an evolving and much contested category. Between the period of 1947 and 1956 when both India and Pakistan outlined elaborate rules and regulations concerning citizenship, minorities in both countries had to continuously negotiate the tension between their state of

3 Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal.

4 Patricia Gossman, Riots and Victims of Violence and the Construction of Communal Identity Among Bengali Muslims, 1905-1947 (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1999), 104.

171 residence and their religion. Communal incidents not only involved acts between “oppositional” binaries, between Hindus and Muslims, but also between loyal citizens and perceived fifth- columnists. In addition to their religion that identified them as minorities in India and East

Pakistan, Muslims and Hindus respectively, were targets of violence because of their decision to continue in their ancestral residence instead of joining their co-religionists across the border. As symbolic representatives of the majority community across the border, the loyalty of minorities in West Bengal and East Pakistan was under close scrutiny.

Research on violence during the Partition has focused on large-scale, concentrated riots during specific historical moments.5 Further, much of the horrific violence took place in Punjab where in addition to communal politics, structural factors such as the presence of demobilized army personnel contributed to the severity of the riots during 1947 and 1948. Although Bengal witnessed large-scale riots in 1946, the transfer of power and division of the province the following year did not elicit any severe forms of violence.6 However, it would not be accurate to say that Partition in Bengal was peaceful. Rather, in post Partition Bengal, violence persisted over the next two decades and was mediated through minor incidents of communal violence in everyday life. Refugee migration in Bengal in the post-Partition period also continued in a chronic manner, its numbers closely following the peaks and curves of violence in the region.

The small scale, intermittent nature of incidents of violence that continued in divided

Bengal was specific in its target of minorities within each nation and performed the significant

5 Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, Gyanendra Pandey, Remembering Partition, Veena Das, Mirrors of Violence.

6 Max Jean Zins has argued that the Calcutta killings of 1946, in which brutal violence on women was first perpetrated on a large scale, provided the impetus and emulatory model to the later Punjab Partition riots. Max Jean Zins, “The 1947 Vivisection of India: The Political Usage of a Carnage in the Era of Citizen-,” in Mushirul Hasan and Nariaki Nakazato, eds., The Unfinished Agenda, National Building in South Asia (New Delhi: Manohar, 2001), 49-77.

172 task of questioning citizenship rights. Such violence did not always manifest itself in physical forms but also on a psychological plane through verbal threats, rumors, and occasionally thinly veiled state propaganda and political speeches. Minorities, both Hindus and Muslims, uncertain whether to join their majority brethren across the border or to continue to remain in their ancestral region, became even more insecure under such psychological assaults. Such psychosomatic violence did not operate in isolation but was bolstered by media coverage, lack of protection from authorities, and deteriorating inter-dominion relations. Indian newspapers consistently portrayed East Pakistan as a region of pervasive violence which targeted not only the wealth and property of Hindu minorities but also their culture and women. Similarly, East

Pakistan media capitalized on the Indian Government’s difficulties with the integration of

Hyderabad and Kashmir, both Muslim ruled princely states, and interspersed their coverage with incidents of persecution of Muslim minorities and destruction of Muslim holy places within

India. The continued persistence of such an ‘ecology of fear’ found physical justification and legitimacy in the riots of 1950 after which a large number of Hindu and Muslim minorities were uprooted and crossed the new international borders.

The Ecology of Fear

a) Urban and Rural Violence

Although the Muslim League had been able to form a government in Bengal in the 1940s, this did not reflect the cultural and economic power structure of Bengali society, in which the bhadralok, intellectual urbanites, businessmen and money lenders, all of who were predominantly Hindu, still dominated. This elite Bengali society included the Muslim upper classes, the asrafs, who were speaking and proudly traced their lineage to the Mughals.

173 Asrafs were consistent in their efforts to differentiate themselves from the “indigenous” Bengali

Muslim peasantry whom they regarded as ‘converts’.7 Most of the bhadralok were residents of urban areas, especially Dacca and Calcutta, and were absentee landlords, owning substantial property in rural East Bengal.8 Their rural linkages were maintained through the appointment of naibs (managers of estates), qanungos (revenue record-keepers) and gomastas (agents) who were predominantly Hindu.9 These zamindars and moneylenders were not partial in their treatment of their Hindu and Muslim tenants and exploitation of labor and resources were designed to secure economic and personal benefit.

Still the majority of the Hindu zamindars could easily be represented as the oppressors of the bulk of the Muslim peasantry for communal as well as economic motives. In a climate of increasing communal polarization of the 1930s and 40s, internal stratification and differences within each community gave way to representations of communal homogeneity. In describing the Hindu-Muslim relationship in pre-1947 Bengal, Nirad C. Chaudhuri, an archetypal colonial subject and Bengali intellectual, recalled, “In the first place, we felt a retrospective hostility towards the Muslims for their one time domination of us, the Hindus; secondly on the plane of thought we were utterly indifferent to the Muslims as an element in contemporary society; thirdly we had friendliness for the Muslims of our own economic and social status with whom we came into personal contact; our fourth feeling was mixed concern and contempt for the

7 Remarking on the fragmented nature of the Muslim community in Bengal, Rafiuddin Ahmed points out “The distance between the Urdu- speaking elite and their Bengali-Urdu speaking rural counterparts, the mofussil landholders (who, despite their somewhat closer contact with the rural masses shared the social pretensions of the urban ashraf), on the one hand, and the Bengali speaking Muslim peasantry, on the other, was often wider than the gulf separating the latter from their Hindu neighbors.” Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengal Muslims, 1871-1906, A Quest for Identity (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 6.

8 The Census of 1901 recorded 67.1% Hindus within the urban population of Bengal province. Census of India, 1901, Vol. 1A, II (Tables), Table V (Calcutta: Superintended of Government Printing, 1903), 20-23.

9 Rafiuddin Ahmed, The Bengali Muslims, 2.

174 Muslim peasant, whom we saw in the same light as we saw our low caste Hindu tenants, or in other words, as our live stock.”10

The quest for a separate Muslim identity throughout the first half of the twentieth century made trenchant use of such class differences and increasingly projected it through the prism of communal difference. For the Muslim peasantry of rural Bengal, the demands for Pakistan, by

1947, promised emancipation from the manipulation of the landlord-jotedar (rich peasant)- moneylender triumvirate. After the Noakhali and Tipperah riots of 1946, and the consequent mass exodus of the Hindus from the villages in that region, an elderly Muslim peasant is said to have remarked that they had achieved Pakistan as the region between Feni and Chandpur had been liberated.”11 The Hindu elite who remained behind became, almost overnight, a minority not only in numerical terms but also found their hegemonic power diminished as the Muslim peasantry believed itself to be ‘liberated’ once Pakistan became inevitable.

In the post Partition period, sporadic attacks on the property of the Hindu elite continued both in urban and rural areas. Such attacks often accompanied by religious slogans and at times involving destruction and defacement of religious icons, at one level reflected the continued use of communal rhetoric to achieve economic gain. At another level, such incidents also called into question the rights of citizenship and nationality of the minority Hindus in East Pakistan. In rural

East Bengal, although the peasantry was diverse in terms of religion, they had, in previous decades, often united along class issues related to landlord and jotedar oppression. However, immediately after Partition, a number of communal incidents involved the usurpation of rural

10 Nirad C Chaudhuri, The Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968), 233.

11 Cited in Taj ul Hashmi, Pakistan as a Peasant Utopia, The Communalization of Class Politics in East Bengal 1920-1947 (Boulder: Westview Press, 1992), 254.

175 landholdings belonging not only to the migrating Hindu population but also of to the minority

Hindus who had decided to remain in East Pakistan. Among the targets were scheduled caste peasants who with their Muslim counterparts had in previous decades fought for peasant rights and supported Fazlul Haq’s Krishak Praja Party. Although the scheduled castes in rural Bengal had been traditionally outside of the Hindu caste system, class-based politics in the 1930s and

1940s had closely aligned their identities with the dominant Hindu ideology.12 In the post

Partition aftermath, their class alliances with the Muslim peasantry continued to splinter along communal lines.

Immediately after the Partition, in August 1947, the majority Muslim population of a village in Noagaon in attacked the section of their village where scheduled caste kaibartas lived. The official report noted that this attack was foiled as the villagers had been at home and had thus “been able to give a heroic defense which had baffled the Muslim mob who had been waiting for an opportunity ever since.”13 Such an opportunity presented itself six months later on the midnight of 11 February 1948, when “a mob of a thousand or twelve hundred

Muslims attacked Kaibarta Hati… and burnt down the whole village … the mob used slogans of

Allah ho , and used crackers to scare away people.”14 The success of the second attack was greatly facilitated since most of the male members of the kaibarta community were away on a fishing trip. The official investigation after this incident reported substantial economic damage but no loss of human lives. Further, the report concluded that the last attack had been well planned and preceded by sporadic incidents of dacoity. The removal, in January 1948, of official

12 Sekhar Bandyopadhya, “ Development, Differentiation and Caste: The Namasudra Movement in Bengal, 1872- 1947” in Sekhar Bandyopadhya, Abhijit Dasgupta and Willem Van Schendel eds. Bengal: Communities, Development and States (Delhi: Manohar, 1994), 90-119.

13 File: 27C-4 of 1948, Home Political, B Proceedings 207-234, October 1950, BNA.

14 Ibid.

176 armed guards who patrolled the locality after the first attack, suggested the complicity of local authorities. Purnendu Kishore Sengupta, a member of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly, who investigated the incident, indicated that such riots had produced a sense of insecurity among the Hindus of the area and some had already migrated to India. He concluded that the only way to restore confidence among the minorities was for the East Bengal government to take prompt action against the miscreants.15

The victims of such small-scale violence had two options – to resist or to migrate. The reasons why they chose the latter as means to resolve the dilemma lies within the structural processes of the evolving nations. For East Pakistan, the project of establishing a post-Partition national order involved the additional task of setting up a new infrastructure for government offices and employees. Such a process involved not only requisitioning houses in the urban areas to house the various departments of the new government, but also recruiting personnel to fill up the administrative ranks depleted by the migration of the Hindus to India. Often Muslim refugees from Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, who were unfamiliar with the traditional social and cultural linkages in the East Pakistan countryside, obtained these jobs. Moreover, having been uprooted themselves from their ancestral homes by neighboring Hindus in India, they were often unsympathetic to the plight of the minorities in East Pakistan. The demand for personnel sometimes opened up avenues of official authority to rural elites and local League leaders who formed part of not only the Union Boards but also became members of the police and administrative bureaucracy.16 Their official capacity often facilitated the increase of their personal landholdings through the requisition of land and property left by the Hindu refugees.

15 Ibid.

16 Complaints about requisitioning are a significant theme within the minority rhetoric of victimhood. However, a number of Muslims also had their houses requisitioned and a number of complaints dealt with local League leaders using their official powers for personal economic gains. For details on requisitioning of property, see chapter 4.

177 Sometimes such requisitioning would also take place even in localities where Hindus and scheduled caste minorities continued to reside.

Although violence had become the “order of the day” for some minority Hindus in East

Pakistan, complaints to the authorities provided little relief. In a memorandum to the Provincial

Minority Board describing the kinds of violence he and his family had to suffer, a resident of

Medinimandal in Munishiganj subdivision of Dacca district cited several incidents of molestations of women and theft of household items. When his brother had been fishing in their own tank, the writer alleged that four or five local Muslims abused him and forcefully pointed out that “this is now Pakistan and all these belong to us. Who are you ‘sala’17 to catch fish here, stop it at once.”18 Although the writer had identified the perpetrators, the police and local authorities were of little use since the nearest police station was five miles away and the perpetrators enjoyed the “full support” of the local Union Board president. He concluded that such incidents were not “occasional happenings, [but] I should say of everyday.” For him and for other Hindu minorities who became East Pakistan citizens after 1947, such forms of violence had become regular occurrence.

Provincial and district minority boards were established in India and East Pakistan after the Inter-dominion Conference of April 1948, to address minority grievances in each state. Each board had a chairman and five members, three of who would belong to the minority community of that state.19 However such boards functioned erratically, and a significant number of Hindu members of these boards in East Pakistan had already migrated to India. With the departure of

17 A pejorative term that literally means brother-in-law but suggests an intimate relationship with someone's sister.

18 Unsigned Memorandum to the Provincial Minority Board, File: CR 7M-1, Home Political B Proceedings, 277- 303, September 1949, BNA.

19 Ibid.

178 such leaders and upper and middle class Hindus from the official administration, the political and social life of eastern Bengal witnessed the splintering of traditional Hindu dominance in these spheres. For those who remained behind and sought to adapt to the changing realities, incidents or even rumors of such violence cast doubts on the wisdom of their decision to remain.

Such localized incidents of intimidation and violence were not always community specific. Although official sources within Pakistan admitted to reports of petty thefts of crops fruits fish and other village products and of cases of alleged intimidation to induce sale of land by non-Muslims, they simultaneously pointed out “there is nothing extraordinary in these as the victims are both Hindus and Muslims.”20 Changed realities of becoming marginal not only in numerical but also in terms of the dominant community, heightened the sense of persecution among those minorities who remained in East Pakistan.

At times these minorities used such reports of petty violence to legitimate their demand for rehabilitation from the neighboring Indian states of West Bengal and Assam. Thus instead of writing to the East Pakistan authorities, the non-Muslim representatives from the villages within

Jaintiapur, Goainghat and Kanaighat Thanas of Sylhet District, East Pakistan, wrote to the Chief

Minister of Assam reporting violence and seeking protection from the Assam government.

Representing mostly the scheduled caste and tribals such as the Khasis and Mikirs, Jogendra

Chandra Nandi, Dhansing Khasia, Nanigopal Dey and others pleaded “We are mostly poor and illiterate and as such many of us lack in courage to stand the oppressions of the Majority Muslim community of our localities. Our life and property and above all our womenfolk and even children are not at all safe in their hands.”21 Moreover, the writers alleged that there were

20 Intra-dominion telegram between Dacca and Karachi dated 4.3. 48. File: 12C-4, Home Political B Proceedings, 371-375, August 1949, BNA.

21 Letter dated 10.11.1947. File 4P-7/48, Home Political, B Proceedings, July 1948, BNA.

179 “several cases of kidnapping, abduction and rape. Loot has almost become the order of the day.

Only arson is not taking place on the ground as given by the perpetrators of all other misdeeds, that after the non- Muslims will have been turned out their houses will go to them.”22 Violence was thus represented as communal as well as being carefully planned by the Muslim majority who sought economic gains.

Although this letter is similar to the written complaints sent to the provincial minority board and to East Pakistani and Indian leaders, it is also representative in its demand for rehabilitation within India. The only way for these villagers “of saving our life and property and our womenfolk and children” was “by migrating altogether from our homes in Pakistan and settling in the nearest available place in Assam within the .”23 In support of their request for rehabilitation in Assam, they claimed that if they were not allowed residence within India then they would be converted to Islam en masse, and most likely would be

“exterminated by the neighboring Muslim population of our localities who are gathering much arms etc. for launching an attack on us on a large scale.”24 If their continuing victimhood failed to convince the Assam authorities to facilitate their migration and rehabilitation, they attempted to establish historical claims by noting that the Jaintia Hills and Assam had been before the British in 1835 separated and annexed their particular region to Sylhet for administrative purposes. In addition to evoking historical ties, the writers asserted that the Assam government would accrue economic benefits of labor and revenue from the settlers. Thus it was not their intention to migrate to Assam as refugees but as legitimate and productive citizens.25

22 Ibid. Emphasis added.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid. Report dated 17.3.48.

180 However, for the Government of Assam such migration was “not desirable” and Assam authorities urged the East Pakistani officials to ensure that these people “may be set free from apprehension and may rest contented without approaching a Government who have no jurisdiction over them.” After an investigation, the East Pakistani Inspector General of Sylhet found that the allegations were “maliciously false.” He also noted that people who were in general migrating to India were not doing so as a result of torture by the majority community.

Rather, they left because “they are at heart deadly against Pakistan.” 26 According to the

Pakistani IG, the petitioners had painted such a false picture with the motive of getting reserve land and rehabilitation in Assam. Thus economic benefits on the other side rather than minority persecution in East Pakistan was represented as the primary basis for migration and new citizenship.

b) Abduction and Conversion

Real and rumored incidents of conversion perpetuated the environment of violence.

These symbolized on the one hand, a forced negation of one’s religion and community and on the other hand signified the numerical increase of one community at the expense of the other.

After the riots of 1946, the Bengal government proposed an ordinance that aimed to provide relief to those who had been converted and to return them to the folds of their community.27

However what it actually did was to deny the “convert” any religion at all – by making their conversion illegal not only were these victims not allowed to profess their new religion but there

25 See Chapter 6.

26Letter from Sir Harold Dennehy, Chief Secretary, Assam, to Chief Secretary, Government of East Bengal, dated 12.1.48. File 4P-7/48, Home Political, B Proceedings, July 1948, BNA.

27 File: L/PJ/7/12239, IOR NEG 31866, “Forcible Conversions and Marriages Nullification Bill, 1947”, OIOC, London.

181 was no mechanism by which these victims could be taken back into their former community.

Moreover the loyalty of converts continued to be suspect.

Conversion, especially of Hindus to Islam, was a key issue in the narratives of violence in the post Partition period. Even when such conversions had come about under peaceful and voluntary circumstances, they became significant within the post Partition definitions of loyalty to the nation. D. L. Power, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of East Bengal, reported to the Government of West Bengal that on 15 June 1948, two Muslim villagers, Barkatullah

Mandal and Insan Sardar, were severely beaten and had their beards cut off by local police constables for performing milad (religious ceremony) at the former’s house the earlier evening.28

The situation acquired a complex character because like many of his compatriots, Barkatullah had been a scheduled caste by the name of Brindaban Mandal before he converted to Islam in

1941 and changed his name. 29 The local authorities insisted that he reconvert back to and give his daughter in marriage to a Hindu. After a severe beating, he was released on a promise that he would re-convert. The next day, the same officers came and harassed his wife when they could not find Barkatullah. This incident forced Barkatullah and his family to take refuge in Jessore and to seek help from the East Pakistani authorities. The case of Barkatullah

Mandal is indicative of how communal identity issues played out locally after the Partition. From the perspective of the Indian officials, Barkatullah’s loyalty could only be ensured by his re- conversion to Hinduism and thus legitimize his claim to Indian citizenship. The West Bengal

28 File: 1I 254 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 22-27, July 1949, BNA

29 Most Bengalis believe that proselytization and forcible conversion resulted in the numerical preponderance of Muslims in the Bengal delta. Richard Eaton has argued convincingly that these conversions had more to do with colonization of land in the eastern delta. As more and more people under the leadership of the pirs (sufi ) cut virgin forests to settle the land, they adopted a lifestyle in keeping with the teaching of the pirs and developed a loose adherence to Islam. Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1204-1760 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993).

182 government in their reply denied that such an incident had happened and noted that Barkatullah was a suspect in a dacoity case. In their view, his migration reflected an attempt to escape prison rather than flight from persecution.

Nowhere was the confluence of violence and identity formation more crucial than for abducted women and their forcible recovery by the Indian and Pakistani states.30 In Bengal, the intertwining of violence and women’s sexuality was manifested through abduction, conversion and physical molestation during the riots of 1946, 1950 and 1964. In addition, sporadic incidents of verbal and physical abuse targeting women during relatively peaceful times became ways in which men, both Hindus and Muslims, communicated their threats on each other.

Unlike Punjab, where women were subject to horrific acts of physical disfigurement targeting their reproductive functions, Bengal during the 1946 riots did not report many such cases.31 In a secret note to Secretary of State Pethwick-Lawrence, reporting on the 1946

Noakhali riots, the then Governor of Bengal, F. J. Burrows wrote that one of the specific features of the disturbances at Noakhali had been that “mobs seldom seriously injured or killed women.”32 Rather, women were generally subject to conversion through the “removal of caste marks from the foreheads of girls and women, breaking the conch bracelet on the wrists of married women, and making them recite prayers and forcing them to eat beef.” Conversion was

30 Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin have argued that “Dramatic episodes of violence against women during communal riots bring to the surface, savagely and explicitly, familiar forms of sexual violence- now charged with a symbolic meaning that serves as an indicator of the place that women’s sexuality occupies in an all male patriarchal arrangement of gender relations between and within religious or ethnic communities.” Ritu Menon and Kamala Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, 41.

31 Although reported cases of abduction of women were few, some leading intellectuals in Bengal felt the need to form an organization which would prevent crimes against women and “rescue, protest [sic] and rehabilitate abducted women.” Known as the Bangiya Nari Raksha Samity, was its president and Radha Kumud Mukherjee was the President of its Working Committee. HS, 5 August 1947, 3.

32 But he also pointed out the reluctance of the victims to admit to being raped, abducted or converted. F. J. Burrows, letter dated 18 November 1946, File: L/PJ/8/575 coll.117/B5 Pt.4, Oct 1946-July 1947, OIOC, London.

183 taken to have dissolved all marriage bonds and as “for maidens it was but proper that they should be wedded to the valorous warriors of Pakistan.”33 Women in such violence became symbols of elite Hindu culture that had traditionally banned inter-personal and social relations with non-

Hindus. Conversion and marriage signaled a greater dissolution of such traditions than mere decimation of the male members of the community. Women often committed suicide to escape molestations and preserve family honor.34

In post Partition Bengal, although reported cases of abduction of women were few,35 fear of such a catastrophe was always at the forefront in the minds of the Hindu minorities, perpetuated by intermittent but consistent media reports on incidents of abduction and molestation of Hindu women. In addition, reports of the Indian state’s recovery operations carried out under the leadership of also received wide publicity and ensured that violence against women continued to be a key theme within public discourse after 1947.

Bengali literature is replete with depictions of the plight of women in situations of violence arising out of the riots during and in the post Partition period. Jyotirmayee ’s The

River Churning describes a Hindu family in an East Bengal village who become victims of communal frenzy.36 When the father is killed and the mother jumps into a pond to preserve her honor, their two daughters face abduction and physical molestation. For Sutara, the younger daughter, who regains consciousness in her Muslim neighbors’ home, this one night of violence, changes her identity. In addition to being a victim, her rescue by a Muslim family ensures that

33 Cited in Suranjan Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 198.

34 Ibid.

35 The numbers are few only in comparison to the cases in the Punjab. East Bengal records provide intermittent evidence of abductions of Hindu women beyond 1947. For example, see Home Political (CR) Proceedings, 218-219, March 1950, BNA.

36 Jyotirmayee Devi, The River Churning, translated by Enakshi Chatterjee (Delhi: Kali, 1995).

184 she becomes an outcaste in her brother’s family. Her encounters force her to become independent of her family, but her experiences of violence continue to color her interactions with other people. Violence for Sutara comes not only from the “other” community but also from members of her own community who refuse to include her within their fold of respectability.

Similarly, in “Karun Kanya” (Daughter of Sadness), a short story, Ramapada Chaudhury portrays the fate of the women who had the misfortune of being caught in between the crossfire of communal violence.37 State machinery in the form of the Recovery Program “rescues”

Arundhuti, the main protagonist, from her life as a wife of her abductor and returns her to family.

However, her family welcomes her only so long as the physical sign of her abduction, her child, was kept a secret. Violence for these women did not end with the physical act of molestation and rape. It began a cycle of exclusion and cultural censorship that hindered their assimilation as citizens of the new nations and fractured their identities within their own families and communities.

Women faced abduction not only from men of the other community but also from men of their own community. J. M. Chatterjee, who was connected with the recovery program in West

Bengal, reported to Mridula Sarabhai that refugee women from East Pakistan, who had camped out in Sealdah Station in Calcutta and other refugee transit centers after the riots of 1950, often fell prey to enticement from traffickers in younger women.38 Newspapers intermittently reported on cases where Hindu men posing as Congress workers kidnapped Hindu refugee women to sell them.39

37 Ramapada Chaudhury, “Karun Kanya” in Manabendra Bandyapadhya (ed.) Bhed-Bhibed, 292-306.

38 J. M. Chatterjee to Mridula Sarabhai, April 1950, File: R/Bengal/15-1950-54, Mridula Sarabhai Papers, NMML. Such incidents were also reported in HS, 7 July 1948, 6.

39HS, 26 June 1948, 8.

185 Recovery operations were implicitly paternalistic in their aim to recover women. They were essentially disruptive for the women whom they wanted to save in order to preserve the honor of the community. A police report on the “rescue” of a Hindu woman from a Muslim bustee (slum) in Calcutta reveals to the dispossession of the rights of the woman during the process of preserving community and national honor. Some Muslims had killed Sarajbala Dey’s husband during the 1946 riots. She had moved from Howrah to Calcutta with her six-year-old son and began living with a man named Chatua. After seven months, she came to know that he was actually a Muslim and his real name was Sadhu Mia. Recently they had again moved to a

Muslim bustee where he died of natural causes. On the day of her rescue, she had gone to take water from a roadside tap and “came to the notice of neighboring Hindus who rescued her and her son” and informed the local police station. 40 Although this was not a case of abduction, the

Hindu neighbors decided that Sarajbala Dey should be rescued once her male protector had passed away and restored to her community.

In another incident, tension prevailed among Hindus at Sealdah Station over three

Muslim men escorting an unidentified woman to East Pakistan.41 Even though the police officer in charge intervened and discovered that the woman was a Muslim, he failed to convince the members of Hindustan National Guards who were on duty at Sealdah refugee center. Although the three men and the woman were allowed to leave the next day, the Hindu public continued to insist that she had been an Hindu and should have been sent to a rescue home. This episode not only questioned the effectiveness of the state police, but also demonstrated that the

40 Noted by Sub-Inspector JL Sen dated 10 July 1948, File: PM 506, West Bengal Police (Special Branch) (henceforth WBPSB), 1948. Some vernacular newspapers like the Dainik Basumati, also reported the story.

41 Ibid. Official Memo. 22 July 1948.

186 predominantly Hindu public of Calcutta felt responsibility for protecting what they considered to be the embodiment of their honor.

c) Letters, Pamphlets and Propaganda

In the post-Partition period, the minority Hindu elite in East Pakistan began receiving threatening letters asking them to leave their home immediately. One such letter, addressed to a prominent Hindu of Rajshahi began with the premise that hitherto Hindus had oppressed the

Muslims and had “torpedoed” Muslim initiatives at bridging the social gap. Now that Partition had become a fact, the letter warned that if the Hindus did not leave then “your dispensary [sic], properties will be ruthlessly massacred, the prestige and honor of your womenfolk must be at stake.”42 The letter than goes onto describe the act of intercourse between the writer of the letter and the women in Hindu household, an act which threatened to physically “mark” their conquest by making them pregnant. Although there were no reported cases of such incidents actually happening, such letters acted as a catalyst for migration of the Hindus from the area.

In addition to such letters, in early 1951, a number of posters depicting Hindus as fifth columnists began to appear at various railway stations in East Pakistan. Captioned in English,

Bengali and Urdu and bearing certificates of issue under Pakistan government, these posters clearly identified the “enemies” of the state.43 One set showed a man dressed as a Hindu and another as a Muslim engaged in conversation and the caption, “Beware! He maybe an agent of our enemy. Watch your words.” In another set of poster, a Hindu is shown to be trying to overhear what a Muslim is saying, with the subtitle “Speak Carefully. The enemy is listening.”

42 File: 972/47, WBPSB, 1948.

43 File: 11P-22/1951, Public Relations, B Proceedings 585-591, August 1953, BNA, See Appendix I (d) and (e) of this dissertation.

187 The West Bengal government immediately petitioned for the withdrawal of such posters in East

Pakistan, but could not before some damage had been done.44

On the other side of the border in Calcutta, Muslim minorities were the objects of threats from certain right wing Hindu groups. Barkat Ali Brothers, a well known tailoring concern in central Calcutta, received a number of anonymous threatening letters around March 1948.

Written by a group claiming to represent the “Indian Terrorist Party,” one letter warned the

Muslim proprietors of Barkat Ali Brothers to stop “their anti-Indian and anti-Hindu activities.”45

Barkat Ali did not close their shop, such an atmosphere of distrust stimulated other minority citizens to rethink their continued residence in West Bengal. Often a rumor of violence would trigger a panic among the minorities. A West Bengal police memo dated 28 May 1948 noted that there was general panic amongst the Muslims of Blockman Street, Wellesley Street and Elliot

Road in Calcutta because of a rumor of an imminent riot. Accordingly, “many Muslims had sent out their wives and children out of Calcutta. They are disposing of their valuable furniture and also ornaments.”46

The police in West Bengal reported that in the wake of the post Partition peace drive in

Calcutta “a campaign of vendetta against Muslims vis-à-vis the West Bengal ministry is being carried on secretly.” To substantiate their claim, the police had seized the circulation of a “highly objectionable and inciting” leaflet, which had been in circulation around end of August 1947 in various congregation points in the city. The leaflet printed in Bengali under the caption “A Word of Warning to the West Bengal Ministry” claimed to have been issued by the Revolutionary

44 File: 4L-B/1950, Home Political B Proceedings 142-145, September 1951, BNA.

45 File: PM 816/48, WBPSB, 1948.

46 File: PM 1019/48, WBPSB, 1948.

188 Party of Bengal. It claimed that the notorious Muslims officers such as Doha and Hafizuddin who had subjected the Hindus to various tortures during the 1946 riots had gone to East Bengal where the Hindus were being oppressed and urged the West Bengal ministers to prevent such oppression of Hindus and take steps to rescue the kidnapped Hindu women. The leaflet concluded with a threat that not a single Muslim will be left alive in West Bengal. Intelligence officials were unable to pinpoint exactly who was behind the circulation of such malicious propaganda but conjectured that it to be the work of an extreme and communal organization known as the ‘Muchipara’ group who had taken an active part in the violence during the 1946 riots.47

Providing Continuity: Violence in the Public discourse

During the countdown to Partition, civic space remained communalized in both .

Small-scale incidents of violence, which most often resulted due to a temporary breakdown in the law and order functions of the state, were swiftly translated into communal terms.

Occurrence of petty incidents of theft and murder and their intensive and continuous coverage in

Indian newspapers ensured that the specter of the Calcutta- of 1946 persisted in public memory.

In July 1947 when some members of the Muslim League National Guard demanded free mangoes from a local shopkeeper in Akhaura, on the border of Comilla and Tripura State, trouble erupted when the shopkeeper refused. A fight ensued and the shopkeeper was severely beaten.48 The next day rumors circulated that the Hindus had killed some national guards and

47 File: PM 506/47, WBPSB, 1947.

48 Editorial, HS, 15 July 1947, 4.

189 retaliatory violence included the burning of local houses belonging mostly to scheduled castes and coolies. The Hindustan Standard carried an editorial on this incident that was symptomatic of the prevailing communal environment. The editorial identified the Muslim national guards as

“minions of a theocratic state” out to “exact levies” from the Hindu minority of which the shopkeeper was a member. While reporting on a familiar incident of abuse within the traditional state-proletariat power structure, which had swiftly become communalized, the editorial also contributed to Hindu elite’s fear of living in a “theocratic state” and being swamped by the

Muslim majority in Bengal.

By 1901, the enumeration process of the Census of India had established the numerical predominance of Muslims in the Bengal delta. In addition, the Bengal Partition of 1905, which aimed to divide the Muslim dominated eastern region from the Hindu dominated western Bengal, and the Communal Award of 1932, for the Muslims in provincial governments had undermined the traditional Hindu hegemony within the political structure in Bengal. Thus when this particular editorial reported that “nearly 8,000 hooligans immediately made an attack on the station… and then set fire to a number of adjacent houses,”49 it played on the existing apprehensions of the Hindu bhadralok of losing power in the public sphere. News of incidents of violence where the Muslims were the perpetrators usually emphasized their numerical advantage over their “victims.”

Another key theme in newspaper reports describing aggression against Hindus was the implicit and sometimes explicit allusion to the utter mindlessness of the violence. Rather, the baser instincts usually drove the Muslim mob to attack innocent people. Thus the editorial prefaced the report of the above incident with the following insight of the conditions prevailing

49 Ibid. , 4.

190 in East Pakistan, “these Muslim masses have been in many places charged with a fanatical desire to exterminate the Hindus if they cannot be brought to a state of abject subjection. All the baser propensities of their nature have been stirred up by this anti Hindu passion. No wonder that in many a place in Pakistan the Hindus feel as if they are lying in a powder dump. For they know that even the resistance to ordinary crimes like theft and dacoity, may well prove the fatal spark to set ablaze the base below.”50 A corollary to such representations was the identification of the

Hindu minority as passive victims not as a sign of their emasculation but as juxtaposed with the stereotype of the “fanatical” Muslim whose sole goal had traditionally been the decimation of their Hindu brethren.

The same newspaper reported an incident of trespassing and abuse occurring in the eastern sector of Dacca in the following terms. “On June 20th, 1947, some miscreants belonging to the majority community along with a mob numbering three to four hundred forcibly entered the house of Narayan Bose and molested some young men of the house and abused some other members in the filthiest terms.”51 Superficially, such an incident was yet another example of the powerlessness of the minority Hindu elite in eastern Bengal. However, what is more interesting is the immediate background to this incident of forcible entry. A crowd had gathered near the house to watch a game of kabadi (a game of tag) between two teams when

Suddenly a section of the Muslims pounced upon a Hindu boy. The boy was then chased by the mob, who in spite of protest from the inmates entered the house of Narayan babu shouting that Muslims were entitled to enter anywhere in Pakistan. Coming out of this house the mob in pursuit of the boy attempted to enter other houses also and on the way the mob caught hold of a young passerby named , and severely manhandled him.52

50 ibid. , 4.

51HS, 25 June 1948, 4. Emphasis added.

52 Ibid.

191 The editorial thus indicates that the Muslim mob had randomly pounced upon a young boy, and later for no reason again had harassed Kamal Bose. Not only had the mob violated the private and now communalized space of a Hindu elite household but had dared to threaten it by espousing their “rights of entry” in a place yet to become Pakistan.

The Indian newspapers, in the post-Partition period, continued to report cases of arson, murder, and harassment of Hindu minorities related to the requisition of property and gun control. These reports emphasized the quotidian nature of these crimes that sought to leave no doubt in the readers’ minds, that such harassment and violence had become a regular feature of daily life in East Pakistan and that the Hindu minority were usually the target victims of such violence.53 Moreover, the requisitioning of houses in East Pakistan was portrayed in Indian newspapers as a method of forced evictions targeting Hindu minorities even though houses of both Hindus and Muslims were requisitioned for these purposes.54

Newspapers in West Bengal were significant conduits in the repeated portrayal of small incidents of crime as challenges to pre-Partition social norms between elite but minority Hindus and the majority Muslim underclass. Like many educational institutions funded by elite Hindu groups in eastern Bengal, Daulatpur College, situated five miles from the district town of

Khulna, was also a religious institution with a temple within its premises. It did not hire non-

Hindu staff and segregated its Muslim students in residences outside the college campus. In

September 1948 when some Muslim students demanded accommodations within the College compound after the migration of a majority of the Hindu students of the College, their action was

53 For news reports on violence and harassment of Hindu minorities in East Pakistan, see ABP, 22 February 1948, 8; 21 March 1948, 1,5; Editorial, 24 March 1948, 4; March 25 1948, 8; 14 April 1948, 8; HS, 1 June 1948, 6; 16, June 1948, 6; 25 June 1948, 6; 4 August 1948, 6; 24 August 1948, 6; 28 September 1948, 8; 19 October 1948, 4; 6 November 1948, 6; 7 November 1948, 10; 10 December 1948, 1; 23 December 1948, 5; 1 January 1949, 6; 2 January 1949, 6; 3 April 1949, 9.

54 See chapter 4.

192 construed as rebellion and “which threatens the very existence of the College.” The Hindustan

Standard reported the incident as another notch in the ongoing persecution of the minority

Hindus.55 Such cultural trespassing was a key theme in the narrative of persecution that circulated in the media and in the minority grievances lodged with the East Pakistan

Government. For example, when the East Pakistan state proposed to reduce the annual Durga

Puja holidays from 12 days to four days, there was widespread protest. The Chittagong Bar

Association sent in a memorandum of protest to the East Bengal Minority Commission, arguing that such an action was a “denial and deprivation of the right of the Hindus to worship the goddess in a proper manner.”56

Newspapers published in West Bengal continued their circulation in East Bengal for the next decade with intermittent bans on them by the East Bengal government.57 Although newspapers published from East and West Pakistan, such as Azad, Insaaf and The Dawn claimed to report incidents in the region, they also implicitly blacked out any communal incidents where the Hindu minorities might have been the victims. Newspapers in India and in particular in West

Bengal also followed a similar policy with minimum coverage given to incidents where Muslim minorities in the state might have been legitimate victims. However, newspapers in both countries reported substantially on the alleged incidents of minority persecution in the neighboring country. Most widely read Indian newspapers like Amrita Bazar Patrika, Ananda

Bazar Patrika, The Statesman and The Hindustan Standard had daily special sections devoted to

55HS, 28 September 1948, 8.

56 Chittagong Bar Association to Manoranjan Dhar, Member of the East Bengal Minority Commission, dated 30 August 1950, File 2p-69, Home Political, B Proceedings 51-52, January 1952, BNA.

57 When certain Indian newspapers were banned on a temporary basis in 1951, the East Pakistan government prohibited the correspondents of key Indian newspapers from operating in East Pakistan. Among those targeted were reporters of Ananda Bazar Patrika, Hindustan Standard, , , Dainik Basumati, Ittehad, The Nation, Roshni and Mandira.

193 news from East Pakistan and were the principal conduits of information for both the public in

West Bengal and in East Pakistan. These columns usually concentrated on small-scale, alleged incidents of violence which continued the portrayal of that region as unstable and a place where the lives of minorities were under constant threat from the majority community. Similarly, East

Pakistani newspapers highlighted incidents such as conflicts in Kashmir and Hyderabad and reported minor incidents of of mosques and bans on cow slaughter in India.58

Jai Hind, published from India, summed up the situation in East Pakistan as

There is economic boycott. There are more and more thefts and dacoities. There are occasional indignities and insults. There are the general superior airs of the Muslims. There is the extortion for the Jinnah Fund…. The air in East Bengal has in fact become too poisonous for the Hindus to breathe. They feel that they are aliens in their own land, and hateful unwanted aliens in the bargain.59

Such depictions of the conditions prevalent in East Pakistan while providing legitimacy for

Hindus to migrate tended to question the very basis of East Pakistan as a nation that was unable to guarantee the safety and security of its minority citizens. By identifying religion as the primary issue for minorities, such reports continued the communal rhetoric of Partition days. The

Ananda Bazar Patrika, a widely read Bengali newspaper in West Bengal, reported several incidents of violence that allegedly showed how the religion and culture of the Hindus were under attack. Published in the form of letters from victims to provide authenticity, one article noted that in Barisal a Muslim youth had snatched the Narayan Shila (a symbolic representation of in stone) from a Hindu gathering and had spat on it. Again in East Dinajpur where some “miscreants” had defecated within the local temple and the traditional weekly meeting to

58 Editorial, Pakistan Observer, 3 December 1949, 2.

59 Jai Hind, 12 March 1948.

194 sing (devotional songs) had stopped under threat.60 In addition to such symbolic transgressions, the article also reported on physical beatings meted out to hapless minorities in

Pirijkandi. The Dainik Basumati, another Bengali newspaper, compared the conditions in Jessore as Mager Mulluk61 (slang for land of the Muslims) and pointed out that the practice of abducting minority women had become a normal affair in the region.62 In addition it detailed several dacoities that had targeted Hindu households. Redress to the higher authorities had been ineffective. In printing these stories, the newspapers urged the majority Hindu community to respond to such attacks on their religion and honor in East Bengal by taking up the cause of

Hindu minorities with Indian authorities.

In Bengal, incidents of communal violence against women continued to be one of the major themes of public discourse. Even during times of relative peace between communities,

Indian newspapers continued to highlight the latest cases of abduction and molestation of women, especially those belonging to the minority Hindu community in East Pakistan.63 In addition, reports of the Indian state’s recovery operations carried out under the leadership of

Mridula Sarabhai, also received wide publicity, ensuring that women continued to symbolize the honor of the community. In a letter to the editor of Amrita Bazar Patrika, one Rabindranath

Biswas of Calcutta expressed concern over the reports of missing Hindu girls and minor boys.

He asserted that most often, these abducted persons were recovered from Muslim houses, and

60 Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), 16 March 1948.

61 Although ‘Mag’ refers to the marauders who in the 16th and 17th century periodically attacked Bengal and are incorporated into lullabies, recent usage of the term refers to Muslims.

62 Dainik Basumati (Bengali), 12 March 1948.

63 For reports on abduction and molestation of Hindu women in East Pakistan and failure of East Pakistan authorities, see ABP, 9 February, 1948, 8; 10 February, 1948,5; 15 March, 1948, 5; HS, 1 May, 1948, 5; 16 June, 1948, 6; 25 June, 1948,6; 10 December 1948,1; 18 April, 1949, 8; 2 May 1949,3;

195 thereby demanded that the public be allowed to “search the suspected Muslim areas of Calcutta which would lead to the recovery of many abducted Hindu girls.”64

The association of abducted Hindu women with Muslim communal places achieved more prominence when the newspapers reported the recovery of a minor girl from the Gutihara Sharif in Calcutta. Although the information of a “devout” Muslim enabled the police to crack the case, the media’s association of the kidnapping and the retrieval from a Islamic religious place added to the existing view that all Muslim spaces including places of worship harbored

Hindu women and girls. 65 When the Indian Government announced that the week of 16

February 1948 as Restoration Week would be symbolic of the recovery of Abducted Women and

Children, several citizens expected immediate recovery of abducted women from Eastern

Pakistan. Claiming that it was a well known fact that many women remained behind the “iron curtain” of East Pakistan, these citizens argued that the failure to recover and to return the abducted women was yet another entry in the long list of false promises that the East Pakistan government was becoming well known.66 If a state could not keep its promises with regard to women, especially women suffering in such bleak circumstances, how would it be able to protect its minorities?

In the communalized atmosphere of the post Partition period, violence against women was seen as a violation of the perceived sanctity of the boundaries of the community. In

November 1948, Suresh Chandra Bannerji, the president of the West Bengal Congress

Committee, submitted a report to the major newspapers, that cited the oppression of Hindu

64 ABP, 2 July 1948, 4.

65 HS, 25 November 1948, 3.

66 Letters to the Editor, ABP: Rajoni Kanta Mojumder, 26 February 1948, 4; Ruby Chakravarty, 13 March 1948, 4; Mrs. Amita Sen and Sarker, 22 March 1948, 4;HS, 28 November 1948, 4.

196 women in East Pakistan as the single most significant reason for the continuing migration of refugees to India.67 To substantiate his claim, he cited numerous reports that his East Pakistan colleagues had been forwarded to him. One report described how some Muslims of a village in

Faridpur district had forcibly kidnapped a local fisherwoman and how the police had arrested those who had come to the defense of the woman. Such an incident had resulted in the mass migration of fisher folk from that locality. Bannerji went on to clearly identify the nature of oppression on women under three headings: a) Ugly gestures made by the majority community, which “was responsible [sic] sending away women, specially young girls to safe places outside

Pakistan,” b) Ugly proposals made towards Hindu women in the absence of their male family members, and c) Threatening letters made to rich Hindus demanding either their women or money in exchange for the safety of the women. To bolster his argument he pointed out that although the Muslim minority in West Bengal also bore the brunt of occasional localized communal clashes they did not migrate because “their religion, their person, their property and honor were safe here.”68 Thus it was not merely the threat of physical violence, but the threat to something larger – religion and honor as embodied in their women- that propelled the minority exodus from East Pakistan.

In a booklet published after the 1950 riots Samar Guha, the secretary of the East Bengal

Minorities Association and a veteran Congressman, identified crimes against Hindu women and the lack of authoritative response from the government as the key reason why East Pakistan had ceased to be an “honorable place for their (non-Muslims) peaceful living.”69 Guha cited several

67 The Nation, 28 October 1948, 3; also published in HS, 28 October 1948, 3.

68 Ibid.

69 Samar Guha, Non Muslims Behind the Curtain of East Pakistan (Dacca: East Bengal Minorities Association, 1951).

197 reports of crimes against women, particularly in rural areas. In one instance, the daughter of a

Hindu clerk in Rangpur was abducted by one of his subordinate employee. When both the abductor and the abducted were arrested and produced at court in Dacca, the woman declared that she had converted to Islam and had married her abductor. The abductor was acquitted and the court recognized the marriage. Guha noted that such cases were frequent and interpreted the court’s verdict as an “utter violation of Hindu sentiments” and were a catalyst to Hindu guardians’ attempts to move their womenfolk to the other side of the border.70 What Guha and others like him did not consider is the place of the abducted woman in Hindu society if she chose to denounce and leave her abductor now husband.

Some members of the Hindu public in West Bengal made the connection between migration and continued harassment of minority Hindu women in East Pakistan. B. K. Nag, wrote to the editor of Hindustan Standard, that “there has been a continued threat to the prestige and honor of women in Eastern Bengal to save which the Hindus have ever since been evacuating their womenfolk to the Indian Union.” Nag’s sources were mainly newspaper reports and hearsay from the refugees who had already crossed the border. He went on to conclude,

“When honor is lost, everything is lost” and urged the East Pakistan government to ensure that such harassment cease and thereby also reduce the influx of refugees.71

Concatenation of Riots- December 1949-February 1950

Small scale and sporadic incidents of murder and looting, requisition of property, propaganda, rumors and media reports on alleged incidents of violence created, at least for the

70 Ibid., 73-74.

71HS, 28 November 1948, 4.

198 minorities in India and Pakistan, a volatile and insecure psychological environment that continued as they began to identify themselves as citizens of the respective states. Narratives of persecution gained currency through rumors and newspaper reports and drew upon communal stereotypes to create a pre-history of communal animosity. The riots of 1950 that occurred in

West Bengal and East Pakistan seemed to corroborate the breach between communities. Even for those minorities who had continued to reside in their ancestral homes in the hope that situation after the Partition would stabilize, the 1950 riots only confirmed and sustained general apprehensions that communal violence could only be resolved with the whole scale “population exchange” or migration of minorities.

The Khulna-Barisal riots of February 1950, which witnessed the largest cross border migration from East Pakistan and India, had little to do with communal tensions initially.72 Two key incidents between the East Pakistan police’s attempts to control communist peasant activists acted as catalysts that triggered mimetic riots across borders. On 20 December 1949 the police carried out a raid on Kalshira village of Bagerhat subdivision in Khulna district to apprehend some communists who were active in the local peasant movement. During their search for the leaders, the police party tried to rape some women of the predominantly namasudra village. In protest the villagers attacked the police party and killed one constable on the spot and injured two others. Meanwhile, the local Ansars who had managed to mobilize some Muslims from nearby villages and launched a rescue operation for the besieged policemen.73 The situation quickly evolved into a communal conflict with battle lines clearly drawn between the police

72 In the year 1950, the influx of refugees from East Pakistan reached an all time high of 1575,000 recorded persons. Report of the Refugee Rehabilitation Committee, Calcutta, Press, 1980, cited in Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children: East Bengali Refugees and the Politics of Rehabilitation (Unpublished Dissertation Brown University, 1992), 27.

73 Press Note issued by the Government of East Bengal on the 3 February 1950 in East Bengal Home Department, Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances (Dacca: East Bengal Government Press, 1950), 38.

199 party and Ansars who were all Muslims and the villagers who were scheduled caste Hindus.

Apprehending trouble the villagers evacuated the area with taking minimal belongings and crossed the border to India seeking temporary safety. In the next few days local Muslims ransacked the abandoned Hindu houses and by the end of the month twenty people had been arrested in this case.74

A similar incident occurred in the Nachol area of Rajshahi district leading to large-scale migration of the local santhal residents to India. Traditionally, the Santhals had been sharecroppers in this area and more recently had become involved in the tebhaga movement.75From around May 1949, the police had been actively trying to quell the movement and had indiscriminately torched several villages, arrested and tortured villagers, and looted houses. Such actions had quickly identified them as agents of landlords and synonymous with peasant oppression. On 5 January 1950, when a police party of three constables and a sub- inspector arrived in Ghasura village in Nachol to cease the paddy from being transported to the local communist camp, they soon became targets of an angry Santhal mob.76 The situation deteriorated as the mob killed all the members of the police party.

In retaliation, the East Pakistan government sent in armed troops and several Ansar groups. Several villages were torched, and the skirmishes between the police and villagers continued for a week. Members of the communist party were arrested and Ila Mitra, a young communist leader was raped and brutally tortured in custody. Fear of police brutality led the

74 Badruddin Umar, Purba Banglara Bhasha Andolana O Tatkalini Rajaniti (The Language Movement in East Bengal and Contemporary Politics) (Dhaka: Moula Brothers, 1995), 228.

75 The demand for tebhaga was a movement of sharecroppers to reduce their rent from two thirds to one third of their crop.

76 Mesbah Kamal and Eshani Chakraborty, Nacholer Krishak Bidroho: Shamokalin Rajniti O Ila Mitra (Dhaka: Institute of Liberation Bangabandhu and Bangladesh Studies, National University, 2001), 126-164.

200 Santhals to migrate en masse to Murshidabad where their tales of violence incited retaliatory violence on the Muslim minorities in nearby towns of Behrampore, Nimtita and .77 This episode led some of these Muslim minorities to seek safety across the border in East Pakistan setting off a chain of communal reactions.

What had started as anti-communist campaigns in East Pakistan were swiftly translated into communal incidents through the narratives of violence of those crossing the borders and through media representations in India and Pakistan. The persistence of an ecology of fear, sporadic incidents of violence and unsettled political and economic conditions after the Partition proved to be a fertile base on which communal antagonism rapidly escalated.

An adventitious set of circumstances in early 1950 considerably aggravated the situation.

The Hindu Mahasabha, which had been temporarily banned after the of Gandhi by one of its cadre members, held its first general conference in Calcutta between December 24 and

26, 1949. At this conference, N. B. Khare, its All India President, cast aspersions on the legitimacy of East Pakistan State and demanded the accession of additional territories from East

Pakistan to accommodate the influx of refugees.78 He was not the first advocate the union of the two Bengals and was certainly not alone in his demand for territory. In a series of speeches in

January 1950 delivered at urban centers such as Bombay and Calcutta, Sardar Patel, the Deputy

Prime Minister of India, held Pakistan responsible for India’s refugee problems and threatened it with armed intervention if it did not fulfill its promises to safeguard its minorities. In his speech

77 Press Note issued by Government of West Bengal dated 6th February 1950 in Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances in West Bengal, 40.

78In the course of his speech N. B. Khare noted “ In East Pakistan also the Hindus are being persecuted and their property and honor are not safe. As a solution for the sufferings of Hindus in East Bengal, in view of the common factors between West and East Bengal, it is clearly in the interest of East Bengal to align with India. Failing this, India should demand cession of two or three border districts from East Pakistan to rehabilitated their refugees there.” Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances in West Bengal. Appendix, 2, 20.

201 on 15 January 1950, delivered in Calcutta, Patel clearly evoked the terror of the Calcutta and

Noakhali riots of 1946 and laid the blame squarely on the Muslim League. He argued that the borders of West Bengal and East Pakistan were artificial and could not come in the way of

Hindus who wanted to help their distressed brethren on the other side.79 Such speeches provided the fuel to the already smoldering communal antagonism on both sides of the border as well as contributed to an atmosphere of imminent war.

Although newspapers had been instructed to black out reports of communal incidents happening across the border, few adhered to such restrictions. Several editorials in popular newspapers in West Bengal painted the anti-communist campaigns in East Pakistan in communal overtones.80 In its editorial of 14 January 1950, the Ananda Bazar Patrika described the conditions in East Bengal as such “News received here regarding the condition of Barisal may be expressed in a sentence, - abduction, kidnapping, forcible conversion, forcible occupation of

Hindu houses and looting- these are materials by which the Pakistanis made their history”.81 The editorial alleged that it was symptomatic of what was happening in the whole of East Pakistan and borrowed the familiar tropes of violence, which had been in circulation in West Bengal’s public discourse since Partition. The editorial also identified the East Bengal Hindus as separate from the East Bengal Muslims because the latter had “made no contribution to the freedom movement [but] have got the reins of administration in their hands. The Hindus by dint of whose sacrifice, sorrows and struggle freedom has been achieved are being driven out and ejected from

79 Note on the Genesis of Communal Disturbances in West Bengal, 3-4.

80 See editorials in HS, 2 February 1950; ABP, 25 February 1950, 4; the major newspapers printed reports on the Khulna and Nachol incidents from 15 January 1950 onwards.

81 Editorial, “Unbearable Conditions”, Ananda Bazar Patrika (Bengali), 14 January 1950, 4.

202 their forefather’s landed property.” In this particular re-writing of the history of India’s national movement, the Partition had clearly created a partitioned memory.

In their descriptions of the alleged atrocities happening in East Bengal, these editorials were consistent in identifying two key distinctive features. First, violence was uni-directional, aimed at minorities who were helpless, unarmed victims of a majority Muslim community. The

Jugantar, a popular Bengali newspaper claiming to serve fifty five thousand households,82 identified incidents in Khulna with “medieval barbarity.” It described the “official aggression of the majority against the minority” in graphic terms,

Police spread out in villages and began beating and killing menfolk and raping womenfolk. It is a repetition of that medieval barbarity of which we had so many instances in 1946. Women are raped while their men are kept under arrest. The groans of the mothers, sisters and daughters did not rouse in the Pakistani police any feeling for the sufferers. But it excited their lust even further.83

The nature of violence itself was thus described in familiar and existing stereotypes of Muslim aggression. The prevalent “historical” anecdote about the Muslim conquest of Bengal in the 12th century C.E. seemed to effectively uphold the primary associative tropes of alleged

“medievalism” and the martial nature of Muslims. The popular version of the conquest notes that a handful of cavalrymen under Muhammad Bhaktiyar entered the palace of the last Sena ruler of

Bengal while he was at lunch and defeated him in the ensuing skirmish.84 The small number of

82 Advertisement, Independence Number, ABP, Calcutta, 1947, 2.

83 Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.

84 A variation of the story of the conquest describes Bhaktiyar Khilji as a merchant in disguise who visited Nadia with the pre-planned motive of conquering the province. When Lakshman Sena, on the pretext of buying merchandise, came out of his palace, the Khilji soldiers, numbering only a few, attacked him. Although the king’s bodyguards put up a good fight at the sudden unexpected attack, they were defeated and brutally killed. The king was captured and Bhaktiyar Khilji became the lord of Bengal. Ramesh C. Mazumdar, Bangla Desher Itihash (Calcutta: General Printers and Publishers, 1957), 91-97. The book was first published in 1943, as the first volume of a comprehensive trilogy of Bengal’s history. Jadunath Sarkar wrote the second and third volumes. Mazumdar, who was earlier the Vice Chancellor of Dacca University and migrated to West Bengal in the wake of the Partition, provides detailed accounts of the popular stories of the Muslim conquest of Bengal but casts doubt on the veracity of

203 the soldiers highlights the martial prowess compared to the peace-loving nature of their victims while the fact that they took the battle into the private domain indicates their total disregard for the rules of engagement. Specific description of communal incidents continually drew and built upon such stories. As the Jugantar informed its readers, it was not surprising that instead of having the “normal” reaction to sufferings of minority Hindu women, the East Pakistani police only felt lust. Another editorial in the Amrita Bazar Patrika identified the rioting in East Pakistan as an instance of “primeval barbarism” and the Hindu minorities as ‘helots in a sacerdotal land.”85 While Hindu “women must sink into dishonor worse- far worse- than death,” the rioting had unleashed upon “unarmed, peace-loving people” a “violence- such as we do not associate even with foreign conquering armies.”86 The contrasting imagery depicted in such editorials aimed to evoke maximum sympathy from those readers whose cognizance of the sword wielding

Muslim fanatic gained an upper hand over shared culture and language as the rioting continued to mirror the violence across borders.

Even the anti-communist origin of violence was, according to newspapers in West

Bengal, merely a ruse to further minority oppression. According to the Jugantar editorial generally “Hindu young men are communist because their talent is progressive and revolutionary, whereas the Muslim young men are old fashioned reactionaries.”87 Such a depiction turned a blind eye to the anti communist stance in India and also to the fact that the communist party in East Pakistan had a substantial number of “Muslim young men!”

the contemporary historical accounts such as those of Minhajuddin and Ishami. Also see, Richard Eaton, The Rise of Islam and the Bengal Frontier, 1-2.

85 Editorial, “A Grim Moment”, ABP, 26 February 1950, 4.

86 Ibid.

87 Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.

204 The second emphasis was to question the legitimacy of the East Pakistani state.

Depictions of violence underscored the tacit sanction and often direct official involvement of

East Pakistan authorities, which meant that redress would be futile. The failure to defend and ensure the security of its minorities became the legitimate watermark of the “moth eaten”

Pakistan’s viability as a new . Several editorials alleged that even after the Partition, the Pakistan government “could not abandon their role of hatred for Hindus”88 and that the “East

Bengal government consider the Hindus to be so many outlaws.”89 Violence in East Pakistan, in their opinion “draws inspiration and nourishment from a theory of State which legalizes tyranny in the name of religion.”90 With such an unreasonable attitude, for which the editorials offered no concrete reasons but left the readers to evoke a seamless history of communal antagonism, it was imperative that the Indian government take up the cause of security and honor of the East

Pakistan minorities.

Government press reports published in major newspapers in both countries detailed the incidents of violence but emphasized the reduced nature of communalism involved in these incidents in an attempt alley the fears of their respective minorities. However, “real facts” only confirmed the minorities’ worst fears. News also traveled with the victims of violence, was rapidly disseminated, and were embellished as it circulated by word of mouth. By the end of

January 1950, as these stories and rumors of murder and violence began to circulate, the situation in both Calcutta and Dacca rapidly deteriorated. Saroj Chakarabarty, the secretary to the Chief

88 Editorial, Jugantar, 18 January 1950, 4.

89 Ananda Bazar Patrika, 18 January 1950, 4.

90 Editorial, “A Grim Moment,” ABP, 26 February 1950, 4.

205 minister B C Roy, provides a vivid contemporary account of the days prior to the riots in

Calcutta in early February 1950.

Stories of horrors and atrocities perpetrated on Hindu minority spread like wildfire with the arrival of about 1300 fleeing refugees at the border town of Bongaon...Masses of refugees were stranded at railheads, steamer stations and at the Dacca airport waiting for transport…Stories of butchering of Hindus during transit by train and steamer were pouring in and journey by land or river from East Bengal without armed escort was extremely risky. One evening when he returned from the Secretariat, news reached him from Sealdah Station that some bogies from border areas had reached without any passengers. They were filled with broken conchshell bangles, shreds of wearing apparels of women and men with bloodstains…Calcutta was in flames immediately after this. The city of Howrah which contained industrial population was the scene of worst rioting.91

As West Bengal newspapers published reports of attacks on trains plying across borders, memories of train travel during the Punjab massacres hovered in the background. Even though such attacks concentrated on looting the passengers and were frequently foiled by the presence of armed escorts in the trains, stories of “empty trains and broken conch shell bangles” found fertile ground on which to breed communal antagonism. In later years, memories of the1950 riots inevitably brought up the specter of trains which arrived without passengers but “smeared with blood, and adorned with remnants of torn dhoti, blouses and .”92

As the refugees from East Pakistan arrived in Calcutta, stabbings, arson and mob attacks became daily occurrences in the city. Mridula Sarabhai, who was closely connected with the refugee relief operations in Delhi, received daily reports from Congress workers in Bengal. A typical report in the months of February talked about the “total annihilation of the Muslims,” police incapability and occasionally their culpability in the rioting, and refugee camps opened up

91 Saroj Chakrabarty, With Dr. B C Roy, 154-5.

92 For example, see, Durgadas Acarya, Udvastu, Dandyakaranya o Andamana (Calcutta: Indian Progressive Publishing Company, 1978), 7; Pravash Chandra Lahiry, Pak Bharater Rup Rekha (An outline of India Pakistan) (Nadia: Shyama Prakashani, 1968), 201-3.

206 in the city for Muslims displaced by the rioting.93 In addition relief workers strongly urged the authorities not to let refugees from East Pakistan mingle with the citizens of Calcutta and spread tales of their plight. Sarabhai came to Calcutta in March 1950 to oversee relief operations and report on the situation. She concluded that although popular causes of rioting was retaliation for events in the East, several anti social and communal elements such as the Hindu Mahasabha and the Council for the Protection of Rights of East Pakistan minorities, a self styled semi-military outfit led by J. P. Mitter, were primarily responsible for inciting the public in the riots in West

Bengal.94

Taya Zinkin, a correspondent of Manchester Guardian, reported on the riots in Howrah thus,

I had seen horror plenty…above all in Delhi at Partition, but never before had I seen such bestiality. The street was short and narrow. Coolie lines on either side faced each other back to back…It must all have happened at night from the way the bodies were sprawling…the wounds on those corpses were terrible –huge gashes cut into red flesh gaping out of brown skins and blood caked all over the ground. Women, young and old, children, men, infants. One slender corpse lay spread eagled across the street. A tiny face rimmed with a thin beard, neatly severed from the neck rested, eyes upwards on the man’s hand. A pack of flies had settled on the dead man’s excreta- death without dignity. I nearly tripped over a loose hand which did not belong to anybody. Suddenly I froze. The dead were mixed up with the living. In front of me a woman squatted, immobile. She had lost an arm, severed from the shoulder which dipped from a huge blood clot. On her lap lay an infant cut into two at the waist. But she the mother was alive. Shivers ran through her mutilated torso as she stared into space. I ran back for help… We visited each coolie house…we found some 20 survivors amidst 342 dead, in a street barely 300 feet long.95

93 No File number, Statement of Mridula Sarabhai, 1950, Home Political (Confidential), WBSA.

94 Ibid.

95 Taya Zinkin, Reporting India (London: Chatto & Windus, 1962), 37-8.

207 Zinkin’s British origins may have influenced her allegorical descriptions of the woman with a child cut in half,96 but there is no doubt that rioting in Calcutta in February 1950 was one of the worst that the city had witnessed since 1946.

In Calcutta, rioting occurred in pockets where Muslims were a numerically substantial presence but not the local majority. From 5th February onwards, , Manicktolla

Ultadanga and Baghmari areas in Calcutta succumbed to arson and looting. In the subsequent days, communal violence moved away from the city and spread rapidly into the border districts of Murshidabad, 24 Parganas, Nadia and Coochbehar, which had been receiving a steady stream of refugees since early January. In March 1950, Muslim members of West Bengal Legislative

Assembly submitted a memorandum to Nehru detailing the various aspects of a “reign of terror and extreme lawlessness” in the previous two months. According to their report anti-Muslim rioting reached its peak on 12 February when “arson, loot, plunder firings, bombings, went on in full swing till late at night. The of Mosques were burnt alive with the Holy hung round their necks… and other innocent Muslims burnt alive.”97 The legislators alleged that the Indian government had been paying scant attention to the sufferings of its own minorities. Rather, “it appears that minorities in East Bengal are the sacred trust of India and are the ‘blood of our blood’” if one compared the measures taken to alleviate their sufferings.98

96 Zinkin’s description may be an allusion to the imperial guardianship now severed and wounded with cut in half reflecting the states of India and Pakistan.

97 “ of Calcutta, January –March 1950,” Memorandum presented by the Muslim Members of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly to the Prime Minister of Bharat, 7 March 1950 (Dhaka: West Bengal Refugees Association, 1950) 4-6.

98 Ibid., 3.

208 The arrival of Muslim refugees in East Pakistan from three different provinces, Assam,

West Bengal and Bihar created a similar volatile situation in Dacca. Muslim minorities in Assam had long been bearing the brunt of the Kheda (Oust Bengalis) movement aimed at expelling Bengalis from that province. After Partition, this movement targeted Bengali Muslim peasants who had settled in that province generations earlier but were now perceived as “alien” to Assamese identity. Intermittent riots in Bihar had evicted a significant number of Bihari

Muslims who migrated to Dacca around this time. The last straw on the proverbial camel’s back was the arrival of Muslim minorities from different parts of West Bengal who had faced retaliatory persecution due to the incidents in Nachol and Kalshira.

Rumor, propaganda and stories of atrocities committed on the minority community in

India accompanied the recent arrivals in Dacca in early February 1950. The Chief Secretaries of

West Bengal and East Pakistan met in Dacca to discuss the various Inter-Dominion problems and discuss proposals to contain the current phase of communal rioting. At the same time, on

February 10, the East Bengal secretariat employees held a protest demonstration and meeting at

Victoria Park, the traditional site for political rallies in Dacca. As the meeting broke up, the mob turned violent and started ransacking and looting shops and commercial enterprises belonging to minorities. On February 12, an armed mob attacked a crowd of Hindu passengers at the

Kurmitolla airport near Dacca, killing and wounding some of the passengers.99 In accounting for the rioting in Dacca between February 10 and12, Tajuddin Ahmed, a prominent leader, identified the main reasons behind the current riots as repercussion from the communal violence in Calcutta. Further, minority representatives of the East Bengal Legislative Assembly

99 Nehru’s statement on the Bengal situation in Indian Parliament on 23 February 1950. Reported in ABP, 24 February 1950, 1.

209 had further exacerbated the situation by their decision to abstain from Assembly proceedings in protest against the earlier atrocities against minorities. Thus when the clerks of the secretariat, some of who were mohajirs from Bihar decided to protest on 10 February, “their action was like setting a spark to a gunpowder pile.”100 As the mob violence spiraled out of control, curfew was imposed on Dacca and the army patrolled the main roads and thoroughfares.

Amy Geraldine Stock, who was a visiting English professor at the Dacca University, provides some vivid impressions of the situation in Dacca in 1950. Her first warning of any trouble came from her Hindu chaprashi (peon) Kalipada, who had enquired whether it would be wise for him and his family to leave East Bengal for India. On February10, Stock received news of trouble in parts of the city. Her acquaintances in Dacca reported the circulation of a number of rumors – that 3,000 women refugees whose husbands had been killed in Bihar, had just arrived in Dacca bringing with them their tales of violence, or that reinforcements in the form of firebrands from Mymensingh had arrived to participate in the day’s rioting which continued to fuel communal violence in the city. The primary rumor which may have been the catalyst to rioting was however the news that “Fazlul Huq’s nephew, a government official in West Bengal, had been stabbed and killed by way of reprisal for events in Barisal. Troops had been called out in Calcutta to check riots, a curfew proclaimed. Angry processions were going round Dacca, police and military were on guard, and Nawabpur Road (the main road through the city from the university side) looked ugly.”101 One of her students, Khorshed, reported to her that the news of the Calcutta troubles and assassination had led the clerks at the secretariat to march in a protest demonstration. The situation had deteriorated when some Hindu shops were looted and the

100 Excerpts from Tajuddin Ahmed’s Diary, reproduced in Badruddin Umar, Purba Banglara Bhasha Andolana, 235-6.

101 A.G. Stock, Memoirs of Dacca University, 1947-51 (Dhaka: Green Book House Ltd., 1973), 162.

210 owners fired in self defense killing four Muslims. “That Muslims could be shot in Dacca was too much for the goonda’s public spirit- besides they were ready for some looking.”102 Later in the day, Stock herself witnessed two policemen beating up some miscreants who had assaulted some women and a fire in a Hindu owned chemical factory.

While Dacca remained at the eye of the storm, communal rioting spread rapidly to other parts of East Pakistan such as Noakhali, Faridpur, Madaripur, Khulna, Jessore, Bogra, and

Mymensingh. In Chittagong, local mobs attacked Buddhist monasteries and a number of

Buddhist minorities were killed. Non-Muslims of that area crossed the border and took shelter in the Lushai hills. Barisal, the home district of the Krishak Praja Party leader, Fazlul Haq, was one of the worst hit districts in East Pakistan. Rioting here began on February 13 as rumors circulated of the death of Fazlul Haq and/or his nephew in the communal riots in Calcutta. Huq who had been at that time visiting Calcutta hastened back to East Pakistan but rioting in several villages preceded his arrival. A Muslim student of Amy Stock, from an outlying rural district, later reported having witnessed armed violence against passengers while he was traveling back to his villages. According to his story,

A gang of goondas armed with knives boarded the train…and murdered all the Hindus wearing dhotis. The others cried out that they were pious Muslims, circumcised. The defenders of the faith were above the vulgarity of investigating the circumcision: to test their orthodoxy they made them recite passages from the Holy Quran and stabbed all those who, from ignorance or sheer panic, were unable to stand up to the catechism.103

The narrator himself had managed to have enough self-command to make the proper answers but had suffered a nervous breakdown once he reached home. Such a story is reminiscent of Sadaat

Hasan Manto’s story of violence in the Punjab riots where rioters differentiated co-religionist

102 Ibid., 165.

103 Ibid., 180.

211 from their victims by their knowledge of sacred texts and on the physical evidence of circumcision.104

Although the main phase of rioting petered out by the third week of February 1950, intermittent incidents of violence continued to persist in the subsequent months. On the one hand

Liaquat Ali Khan and Nehru exchanged telegrams proclaiming their readiness to go to war if needed. On the other hand, both assured each other of their efforts to protect the security of their respective minorities. Meanwhile, panicky refugees from East Pakistan continued to arrive in

West Bengal in a steady stream via steamers, planes and trains. In a letter to B. C. Roy, Nehru noted, “From 1950 -52, 9.32 lakhs of Hindus have come to West Bengal and 3.84 lakhs Muslims have gone to East Pakistan.”105

East Pakistani authorities were not keen for Hindu minorities to cross the border and sometimes were over-zealous in their attempts to curb their movement. In an urgent telegram to

Liaquat Ali Khan, Jawaharlal Nehru pointed out two instances of attacks on trains carrying

Hindu refugees to West Bengal. On 26th February 1950, some unknown “miscreants” stopped the Dacca Mail and forcibly detrained the passengers. Nehru’s telegram cited another incident where on

27th morning the steamer bound to Goalondo from Narayanganj carrying 1500 evacuee passengers was forced by some Muslim volunteers to disembark on a char named Kazirkhila in district Faridpur. This was not deemed a halting station and steamer left for Goalondo leaving passengers stranded but carrying part of their luggage. After some time they were attacked by local hooligans.106

104 Sadat Hasan Manto, “Mishtake,” in his Partition: Sketches and Stories, trans. by Khalid Hasan (New Delhi: Viking, 1991), 33.

105 Jawaharlal Nehru, letter dated 2 December 1952. G. Parthasarathy, ed. Letters to the Chief Ministers 1947-64, Vol. III (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985).

106 Telegram no. 30592 dated 2 March 1950, File: 214/50 Home Political CR, 1950, WBSA.

212 News of such train and steamer de-boardings were reported in the Indian newspapers depicting yet more instances of persecution of Hindu minorities in East Pakistan.

In the months following the riots in West Bengal and East Pakistan, public opinion in the former began to advocate a “population exchange” and long-term rehabilitation of the East

Pakistani Hindus. The prevailing public discourse on violence and victimhood of the East

Pakistani Hindus now reached an all time high as tangible victims bearing the marks of violence crossed the borders. The Amrita Bazar Patrika decided to use its pages to elicit the help of its readers in finding a solution to the crisis and requested them to provide opinions.107 The text of the appeal referred to the earlier Gallup poll of April 1947 which had requested public opinion on the issue of Partitioning Bengal. With similar intentions of gauging the public mind in 1950 the newspaper urged,

Today, in the face of a much bigger peril when the very existence of the 12 million of East Bengal Hindus is at stake, the Government in all seriousness is searching for a way out. We appeal to all our countrymen to give their considered opinion as to what may be the permanent solution to this vital problem, so that our government might know the voice of the people and act accordingly, once more. We shall send this national verdict to the proper authorities and duly interpret them through our columns. Let our countrymen help us in crystallizing public opinion on this most momentous problem of the hour.108

The appeal re-appeared several times in subsequent editions of the newspaper as it published the letters in response as a full page feature.

Several readers urged the evacuation of the minorities as “the only solution.”109

Nalinakshya Sanyal, a veteran Congress worker, urged that “India should unequivocally declare her doors open for the reception of the minority community of East Bengal and their re-

107 “ What is the Solution?” ABP, 28 February 1950, 1.

108 Ibid.

109ABP, 25 February 1950, 4; 7 March 1950, 7; 13 March 1950, 4; 16 March 1950, 7.

213 settlement in suitable areas throughout India.” Further, the “protection of the person, property and honor of East Bengal Hindus will be a concern for the Government of India” 110 and the minorities should be declared Indian nationals even when they continued to reside in East

Pakistan.

For another section of the Patrika’s readers, evacuation was “cowardly and not unmanly” and the East Pakistani minorities had as many rights of citizenship to their homeland as their Muslim brethrens. Thus the Indian state should do everything to ensure the minority’s safety and security in East Pakistan even if it meant going to war or the direct annexation of East

Pakistan to the Indian union. 111 Another letter described the events in East Pakistan in gendered terms depicting the incidents as instances when the “very soul of India is being molested.”

Arguing that the question of evacuation of the minorities was no longer viable, the letter urged all West Bengalis “to do or die for protecting the honor of their mothers and sisters” and save

“all that which makes a man a man.”112 Identifying the Muslims in East Pakistan with Nazis and

Japanese, Nirmal Sinha, a professor based in Burdwan, urged the Indian authorities, “Let us therefore, with all our moral courage and unflinching devotion to the right cause tackle the

Pakistan danger rather than shrink from it and be dubbed moral cowards and defeatists. Moral courage must be shown not only through words but also through action, when necessary.”113

In an atmosphere where both public and political rhetoric increasingly adopted a bellicose attitude, Nehru and Liaquat Ali entered into high level talks and concluded a pact that promised to ensure safety and security of minorities in each country. Known popularly as the Delhi Pact or

110Ibid., 9 March 1950, 4.

111Ibid., 27 February 1950, 4; 7 March 1950, 7; 16 March 1950, 7.

112Ibid., 28 February 1950, 4.

113 Letters to the Editor, ABP, 15 March 1950, 4.

214 the Nehru-Liaquat Pact of April 1950, it urged minorities to return to their homeland where their property would be returned and their personal safety assured by the respective governments. In an effort to provide a sense of security to the minorities, the Pact incorporated provisions that guaranteed equality of citizenship, job opportunities and safeguards for minority interests.

Although the Pact initially helped to check the exodus, conditions remained unstable in East

Pakistan and the migration continued unabated. Some groups like the Hindu Mahasabha launched a strong public campaign to highlight the atrocities committed on the Hindu minorities in East Pakistan. Even the more secular Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, comprising eminent public figures in Calcutta, criticized the Pact as not having “at all helped to create confidence or a sense of security in the minds of the Hindus.”114

The Nehru-Liaquat Pact was arguably a band-aid solution to curb minority migration and reduce the risk of an international war. Although both India and Pakistan promised to protect the rights of their minority citizens, provisions to implement such promises remained at best rudimentary. For the refugees, the Pact represented a Hobson’s choice; they could either go back to their home towns which continued to reverberate with communal tensions or the could remain in an alien environment in West Bengal or East Pakistan as the case may be and hope to be rehabilitated by the respective governments. A number of East Pakistani Hindus returned but the deteriorating economic conditions, the continuation of sporadic communal violence and the imposition of the Passport regulations at the border forced them to cross the border continually.

Amy Stock writes poignantly of the situation facing the minority Hindus in East Pakistan,

Kalipada decided not to emigrate for the present. But the crisis brought him to one momentous step: he sold his remaining cow, his favorite a beautiful dark brown creature with a newborn calf, to Abdul. He could hardly bear to part with her but the responsibility

114 Cited in Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities: East Bengal Refugees and their Rehabilitation in India, 1947-79” in Howard Brasted and D Low eds. Freedom, Trauma, Continuities Northern India and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998), 110.

215 of caring for a sacred animal in this troubled world was more than he could face, for if any Muslim tried to steal or kill her it would be his religious duty to defend her life with his own. Abdul promised not to slaughter her, and Kalipada put her under my protection in committing her to Abdul and calling me to witness. The transaction took place in my office, ceremoniously, as if it symbolized the ordeal of the Hindus and the irretrievable decline of their security under the apparent restoration of goodwill. Kalipada shed tears of emotion, and Abdul, who had made an excellent bargain, stood triumphantly erect…he (Abdul) was a man of his word: cow and calf lived in safety, and if she ceased to be a goddess the quality of her morning milk was not impaired.115

Conclusion

For Bengal, the Partition did not signal the end to communal violence nor did it mean a restoration of security in the minds of minorities on both sides of the border. Instead, the post

Partition years were significant in their persistent uncertainty and recrudescence of urban and rural violence that enhanced communal sensitivity as every event was invested with communal significance. As religious identity became the primary form of recognition for minorities, small incidents of transgression and breaches in pre-partition social equations created an “ecology of fear” in the minority psyche. In isolation, any one incident of violence had little significance for community identity. But the persistence of sporadic thefts, abductions and arson created distinct communal spaces whose boundaries described each community’s vulnerability and fear of the

‘Other.’

In addition to physical aggression, psychological violence informed minority insecurities.

The public discourse on violence focused on validating hearsay and highlighting victimhood of the minorities while emphasizing the wanton destruction of religious places such as temples and mosques. Rumors and tales of atrocities across the border reported in the media continued to circulate even during times of peace, feeding on existing paranoiac stereotypes of the “Other.”

Local propaganda of right wing groups like the Hindu Mahasabha underscored the cultural ties

115 Stock, Memoirs, 178.

216 of the East Pakistani minority Hindus with the West Bengali Hindus but in the same breath denied ties of common language and cultural tradition to the Bengali Muslims.

The riots in 1950 found a prepared psyche that could easily accept and translate anti- communist repression as communal oppression. As communal frenzy boomeranged unremittingly across the border and engulfed Hindu and Muslim minorities in its wake, an unprecedented number of refugees sought shelter in India and Pakistan.

Both India and Pakistan were averse to the continued migration of Hindus and Muslims respectively into their dominions. The next chapter examines the different ways in which both states defined such migration and the migrants. Official understanding, especially in India, of the specific nature of violence during and after the Bengal Partition influenced their decisions to allot refugee status to the migrants as well as disburse rehabilitation resources. Such understanding created the discursive notion that the East Bengali Hindu migrant cum refugees had uprooted themselves to reap the benefits of India’s relief and rehabilitation policies.

However, the narrative of violence and victimhood were central themes in refugee demands for rehabilitation and the demand for legitimate citizenship in India.

217 Chapter 6

Partitioned Identities and the Politics of Rehabilitation

The migration of the minority Hindus from eastern Bengal after 1947 did not take the Indian state and the authorities in West Bengal by surprise. This movement had already begun as an immediate consequence of the 1946 riots in eastern Bengal. Unlike the situation in

Punjab, which witnessed an exchange of minority Hindus and Sikhs from the West and Muslims from the East,1 in Bengal between 1946 and 1950, the migration was mainly of minority Hindus from East Pakistan into India.2

After the riots in Calcutta in 1950, many Muslims shifted from Bihar and West Bengal to

East Pakistan.3 A unique feature of the Partition in the eastern sector was the chronic nature of migration that followed the peaks and valleys of violence and instability in the region which was related to political or economic factors. Migration in Bengal remained intermittent for two decades after 1947. Consequently the new Indian state had to formulate and execute relief and rehabilitation measures for the displaced over a prolonged period.

This chapter has two interrelated sections. The first one explores the response of the India and Pakistani states to the migration of East Pakistani minority Hindus to India and traces the

1 According to Government of India estimates, 4.5 million Sikhs and Hindus left their homes in West Punjab and migrated to India and 5.5 million Muslims moved from different parts of India to West Pakistan. After Partition, 50. For a good study on the impact of partition on Punjab, see Swarna Aiyar, “August Anarchy: The Partition in Punjab, 1947,” in Low and Brasted ed. Freedom Trauma Continuities, 15-38.

2 The total number of migrants from East Pakistan to India between 1946 and 1950 was around 2 million (2071197). This migration was mainly to West Bengal, though other neighboring states such as Assam, Tripura, Orissa and Bihar also received refugees. In 1951, the percentage of displaced persons to the total population of each state was 9.24% for West Bengal, 3.13% for Assam, 0.14% for Orissa and 0.19% for Bihar. Statistical Information Relating to the Influx of Refugees from East Bengal into India till 31st Oct. 1971, Vol.4, Ministry of Labour and Rehabilitation (West Bengal: Government of India, 1972).

3 In a letter to BC Roy, Nehru noted, “From 1950 -52, 9.32 lakhs of Hindus have come to West Bengal and 3.84 lakhs Muslims have gone to East Pakistan.” Jawaharlal Nehru, letter dated 2 December 1952 in G. Parthasarathy, ed. Letters to the Chief Ministers 1947-64, Vol. III (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985).

218 changes in the policies of the Indian government towards these migrants. In the process of identifying and defining the “refugee” from the eastern sector, the Indian state operated within a limited paradigm of violence and victimhood that sometimes rendered these refugees as illegitimate migrants. In questioning the legitimate rights of these refugees who migrated during the 1950s and 1960s, the Indian state also created a specific “Bengali” refugee identity that was unfavorably pitted against that of the enterprising “Punjabi” refugee in the West. The Indian state’s rehabilitation policies as a crucial component in the fashioning of the paternal welfare role of the new state had to balance the welfare of the migrant with the economic realities of post- colonial nation. In the efforts to publicize the success of its rehabilitation machinery that ostensibly created citizens out of refugees, the Indian state ignored any criticism against its policies that looked good on paper but often were only partially implemented. The Indian state balanced its paternal role by continuing to offer relief and rehabilitation to the migrants from

East Pakistan while implicitly and sometimes explicitly shifting the blame for any failure of such measures to the laziness and economic motives of Bengali refugees, which according to certain sections within the government had led them to cross the border. The refugees from East

Pakistan were, in the eyes of Indian state, both victims in “need” of relief and rehabilitation, but also the “cause” of any failure of such measures.

The second section examines the debates surrounding the grant of citizenship and franchise rights to these refugees. The policy of the Government of India had been to allow citizenship rights to those migrants who officially declared their intention to become citizens of

India and later acquired the necessary documentation. Getting one’s name on the electoral rolls was one of the primary ways to ensure subsequent citizenship rights. Such a policy presented two contradictory dilemmas for Indian authorities. On the one hand, by allowing any migrant to

219 acquire citizenship, it could limit its rehabilitation responsibilities towards the refugees. On the other hand, the government feared that such a policy might encourage Hindu minorities to continue migration that would create not only an economic strain but also threaten the secular façade of the Indian state. In addition to restrictions on refugee registration, the Indian government also fixed a time limit by which a refugee/migrant had to declare his/her intention to stay in India. Finally, the government declared that inclusion within the electoral rolls would not guarantee automatic citizenship rights.

From the very beginning the Bengali refugees countered official attempts to depict them as lazy and unproductive. They argued that inspite of the Partition they were citizens of India and claimed that it was the Indian government’s moral duty to rehabilitate them. They articulated their demands for rehabilitation within a discourse of historic rights and partition victimhood. In support they evoked earlier contracts in which Indian leaders had assured them of their continuous support after the Partition. Although citizenship was the end goal for both the Indian government and the refugees, the latter retained their refugee identity as a political choice as it provided them with a concrete platform from which to articulate and to negotiate their demands for social and economic integration.

Early Responses and Policies of the Indian State towards the Refugee Movement 1947-50

In 1947 Jawaharlal Nehru had designated refugee rehabilitation as a national responsibility of the postcolonial government.4 He described it not only as a humanitarian act

4 At the discussion on a motion on relief and rehabilitation of refugees, on 29 November 1947, in the Constituent Assembly sessions, Nehru declared “I should say that any government of India should make itself responsible for the well being of every Indian in this country and not temporarily responsible but permanently responsible…We as a government and we as a House must realize that it is our responsibility that every India should have food to eat and a house to live in, and education and opportunities of progress. If that is so for everyone in the country, certainly it is

220 towards refugees but also a realistic one which would define the future and welfare of India.

However, the focus of rehabilitation measures was directed mainly toward the refugees from

West Punjab. The national leadership was ambivalent about the chronic refugee migration in the eastern sector, viewing it as a threat to the fragile economy of India as well as undermining its foundational principle of secularism. In 1948, Nehru wrote to B. C. Roy, the Chief Minister of

West Bengal that,

It is wrong to encourage any large scale migration from East Bengal to the West. Indeed, if such a migration takes place, West Bengal and to some extent the Indian Union would be overwhelmed. The problem therefore, before us is how to keep up the spirits of the Hindus in East Bengal and how to help them in so far as we can. If they come over to West Bengal, we must look after them. But it is no service to them to ask them or encourage them to join the vast mass of refugees who can at best be poorly cared for.5

Nehru reflected the dilemma of the official establishment with regard to the relief and rehabilitation of the East Bengali refugees. On the one hand, the state felt responsible for providing succor to the victims of Partition, but on the other hand the state deemed that too much government-sponsored aid would encourage cross border movement to secure economic benefits. This ambivalence influenced the Center’s financial commitment to West Bengal. B C

Roy, complained to Nehru that,

You are under the impression that your Government gave us a ‘large grant’ for the purpose of ‘relief and rehabilitation’. Do you realize that the total grant received for this purpose from your government in two years, 1948-49 and 1949-50, is a little over 3 crores, and the rest about 5 crores was given in the form of a loan? Do you realize that this sum is ‘insignificant’ for 16 lakh displaced people because it works out at about Rs 20 per capita spread over two years. Will you call it magnificent?6 so for these unhappy countrymen of ours who have suddenly found themselves lost in the storm that arose. We recognize that responsibility fully.” CAI (Legislative) Debates, Vol. II 1947, 917-922.

5 Jawaharlal Nehru to B. C. Roy dated 22 March 1948, in Saroj Chakarabarty, With B. C. Roy and Other Chief Ministers, A Record up to 1962 (Calcutta: Benson’s, 1974), 30.

6 Letter dated 1 December 1949. B. C. Roy received a reprimand from Vallabhbhai Patel for his accusatory tone in his letter to Nehru, urging him to be ‘deferential as is appropriate’. Durga Das ed. Sardar Patel’s Correspondence, 1945-50, Vol. IX (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1972), 35-36.

221

Roy also reminded Nehru that West Bengal had begun with a deficit balance. As a border state it had to incur significant costs to set up border police and develop border roads. Roy’s accusations reflected a larger public belief that the Center’s aid package to West Bengal was far less than what was allotted to Punjab.7

Unable to prevent migration, Indian and West Bengal authorities initially followed a two- pronged solution of high level talks with East Pakistan authorities and provide temporary relief to stem the tide of human movement across the newly created border. Indian authorities consistently declared in public that conditions in East Pakistan were no longer unstable and that the Pakistani government had promised to protect its minorities and guarantee them citizenship rights. Addressing a press conference in July 1948, ten months after the Partition, B. C. Roy noted, “ I still maintain that every attempt should be made not only to prevent exodus from East to West Bengal but to induce people to return to East Bengal.”8 Shortly after independence some

Indian leaders publicly suggested that such migration was unwarranted, temporary and should be reversed. Even after the riots of 1950, Indian rehabilitation policy implicitly advocated the return of the refugees/migrants to East Pakistan. In January 1951 , the Central

Minister for Minority Affairs claimed at a public meeting in , West Bengal, that, “

There could be no question that the best solution of the whole problem [of refugee influx] today

7 In 1956-57, the Indian government admitted that migration of displaced from the west and the east was now numerically equal but on total expenditure towards rehabilitating these displaced continued to remain skewed. The analysis of expenditure showed that the West Pakistan displaced persons to have received 170. 34 as compared to 111.00 (in crores) given to East Pakistan displaced. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, Government of India, 1956- 57, 46. For details on differential policies of the Center towards refugees in the west and east, see Report of a Tour of Inspection of Some of the Refugee Homes in North-, reproduced in Jasodhara Bagchi and Subhoranjan Dasgupta ed. The Trauma and the Triumph, 235-252.

8 ABP, 4 July 1948, 1.

222 would be for everyone to return to his home if he could do so. It was for the refugees to find out for themselves whether conditions were such as would enable them to go back.”9

In portraying East Bengal as stable and free of communal animosity, Indian leaders attempted to remove the central reason for the migration. Officials in West Bengal and in New

Delhi put their faith in high level talks with representatives from East Pakistan and strongly believed that such meetings within the seclusion of official-dom would ensure that the refugees would return to their home regions. These Inter-Dominion meetings and the consequent agreements operated on the belief that such paper proclamations would restore “security” the minds of the minorities.10 Despite the semi-annual meeting of the Chief Secretaries of the East and West Bengal governments to discuss inter-dominion matters and to guarantee minority rights to their respective citizens, small scale violence targeting minorities continued unabated in their respective dominions. At the conclusion of the Inter Dominion Conference of 1948 a drop in the volume of migration led to the mistaken belief that the worst of the evacuation was over.11

Some political leaders in West and East Bengal exhorted the Hindu minorities to stick to their “hearth and home” rather than to become a burden on the Indian state as refugees. Gobinda

Lal Banerjee, the chief whip of the Congress party in East Bengal after Partition, urged

9 The Statesman, 30 January 1951, 5.

10 In the Inter-Dominion Conference held in Calcutta in April 1948, the two rehabilitation ministers of East Pakistan and West Bengal, Ghulam Mohammed and K C Neogy respectively, made a joint declaration – “that they are determined to take every possible step to discourage such exodus in either direction.” They also decided to establish minority boards at the provincial and local levels in both countries to provide security in the minds of the minorities. Cited in Gyanesh Kudaisya, ‘Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities,’ in Low and Brasted, eds., Freedom Trauma and Continuities, 148.

11 Many of these early refugees followed the pre-Partition network of kinship ties and the tradition of moving to Calcutta in search of occupation or education. A number of them were also Optees or those who had opted to join the civil administration and the military in India inspite of the fact that their residence was in the newly created Pakistan. Nilanjana Chatterjee, “The East Bengal Refugee: A Lesson in Survival,” in Calcutta: The Living City (Calcutta : Oxford University Press, 1995), 72. Also see Chapter 4.

223 Those who have left their home and hearth in east Bengal in search of food and shelter I have nothing to say to them. But those who have gone to West Bengal out of fear, I would appeal to them to come back – let us assert our rights in the land of our forefathers and die in the act of doing so. … It is a fight between progress versus regress and the ruling people must have something progressive to give to the society if they want to rule. Are you going to form a sect of refugees in west Bengal or become a charity citizen? Is it not more honorable to stand on and fight for your rights and obligations as citizens of your homeland in East Bengal?12

The act of migration was denied any connection with violence. Rather a lack of patriotism prompted by fear was implied to be the root cause of refugee migration. Others such as Nalini

Ranjan Sarkar in West Bengal urged the wandering refugees from East Bengal “not to create a sort of minority problem” within West Bengal.13 Rather, he urged them to bear with good grace the consequences of historical change such as the Partition which he asserted was “vitally necessary.” In a public meeting, on 5th February 1949, a minister of the West Bengal government reportedly described the East Bengal refugees as “brother foreigners” from “another country” and claimed that “the question of rehabilitating the refugees in west Bengal was not as important as the question of sending them back to their own country.”14

In contrast to such pithy rhetoric, others described the term “refugee” as an “abominable word” with its implicit connotations that the migrants were “strangers whose access to shelter depended on the benevolence of the .”15 During a debate on the rehabilitation of refugees in the Constituent Assembly, in 1947, a member argued that the East Bengali minority

Hindus were “natives” of India, “born of its soil” and had a “title and a right” to resettlement in the country. He went on to demand that the government avoid using the word refugee which hurt

12 HS, 6 May 1949, 6.

13 The Nation, 12 February 1949.

14 Sarat Bose, Selected Speeches and Writings, 1947-1950 (Calcutta: Thacker’s Press, 1954), 72.

15 Proceedings of the CAI (legislative) v. II no.1, cited in Nilanjana Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children, 72.

224 the “self –respect” of the displaced and proposed that they be called pravashi which means exile because the partition had exiled people who had originally been a part of the Indian nation.16

Newspapers such as The Statesman, which had long been the implicit spokesman of colonial authorities, took up the cause of portraying East Bengal as free of communal animosity and violence. In August 1948, its special correspondent published a two-part article highlighting the communal peace and security in the villages of East Bengal. The interactive session between the correspondent and an anonymous villager was represented thus,

“Moving unescorted along village roads, your correspondent questioned many Hindu villagers and the conversation proceeded after this fashion, Q- Are you happy in Pakistan? A- Yes. (with evident surprise at the question) Q- Has anyone attempted to seize your crops or your fields? A- No Q- Do Muslims harass you in any way? A- No. Some said, “They did once, but not now.” Q- Do your women go about without fear? A- Yes Q- What is your biggest worry? A- Crops Q- Do you intend to stay in Pakistan? A- Yes, Some qualified this with “Unless all the other Hindus leave.” Q- Have any villagers you know left Pakistan? The answer invariably was No. Sometimes, “Yes, for lack of food.”17

In this representation the East Bengali Hindu minority had no experience of harassment or any other problem than “lack of food” to migrate to India. In the event of migration, these villagers and others like them should thus be labeled as economic migrants rather than as Partition victims or refugees.

In January 1950 after the riots in Khulna in December 1949, The Statesman assured readers in West Bengal that “Politically, the East Bengal scene is on the whole one of unbroken

16 Ibid.

17 File: II-238/1948, Home Political B Proceedings, July 1949, BNA, The Statesman, 3 August 1948, 8.

225 peace. The minorities appear more confident and have lost their earlier nervousness which showed itself in sudden bursts of exodus.”18 At the height of communal tension during February

1950, the newspaper published a front-page article by a Christian that gave his impressions from recent travels to East Bengal. Rev. W E French of Union Christian School,

Bishnupur, 24 Parganas wrote that,

We spent three happy days in Barisal, with no sign of any trouble at all. Barisal has a good reputation in the matter of communal relations. …. Exaggerated accounts of the communal disturbances in Calcutta had reached Khulna, so no Hindus were allowed to travel, and Muslims were advised not to do so. We were allowed to travel. One of our number who was wearing a dhoti (white long piece of cloth wrapped around a lower half of Hindu men) was held up, and I went to the enclosure where the passengers had been seated, and was impressed by the friendly way in which the Pakistan Police were dealing with them and was assured that the women were well treated.19

It is likely that The Statesman hoped that by publishing the views of a third party, it would be able to reassure the public of its dispassionate reporting and its role as the purveyor of

“authentic” news at a time of officially sanctioned media blackouts. The missionary continued thus, “It was obvious that these wild rumors are responsible for the present excited state of mind on both sides of the border. We would strongly urge everybody not to believe these rumors, but to seek accurate information from people who really know.”20

Early policies of the Indian government towards the East Bengali refugees operated on similar beliefs of a temporary and reversible migration and were geared toward the containment of the “problem” by giving rudimentary relief to the refugees and trying to ensure that they returned across the border. In addition Indian officials held regular meetings, appointed a Deputy

High Commissioner in Dacca and one in Calcutta, and ensured that each state had a functional

18 The Statesman, 1 January 1950, 4.

19 The Statesman, 16 February 1950, 5.

20 Ibid.

226 Minority Board. The Indian state sought to combine high level, inter-dominion agreements with temporary relief measures in the form of subsistence doles and the establishment of relief camps along the border. The term “relief” was applied to its enumeration and classification of refugees in terms of their social and economic background and some provision of assistance for daily survival.

The Government of India opened relief camps and transit camps21 along the new international border and in Calcutta and its adjoining areas. The Government of West Bengal also opened “Interception Centers” that worked in conjunction with the relief camps at the border, where “migrants on arrival, were questioned and issued with Interception Slips to qualify them as bonafide refugees.”22 Those “migrants” who were in need of immediate assistance and sought relief and rehabilitation assistance were admitted to camps run by the West Bengal government.23 Even those who did not require government help could obtain refugee slips that qualified them as refugees for other benefits including special quotas for education and jobs.24

Although the Indian state identified those who crossed the border in the late 1946 through middle of 1948 as “refugees” and later identified them as the “displaced,” its underlying belief was that

21 These camps were classified as Temporary and Permanent Liability Camps, Worksite Camps and Colony Camps. For details on various government measures towards refugees in this period see, Samir Kumar Das, “: Responses of the Government of West Bengal,” in Pradip Kumar Bose ed. Refugees in West Bengal, Institutional Practices and Contested Identities (Calcutta: Calcutta Research Group, 2000); Prafulla Chakravarti, Marginal Men (Calcutta: Lumiere, 1990) and Jhuma Sanyal, Making of a New Space, Refugees in West Bengal (Calcutta: Ratna Prakashan, 2003).

22 Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry (Delhi: Government of India, 1967), 1.

23 Once the refugees obtained refugee slips, they were then transported to a transit camp. Here, camp officials collected information about their earlier professions and gave them cards which authorized them to live in regular camps and to draw on maintenance grants. The Great Challenge: And still the trek continues, Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department (West Bengal: Government of West Bengal, 1957), 15.

24 Ibid., Out of the 13.78-lakh persons displaced by December 1949, only 1.06 lakhs sought admission to these relief camps. In later years the Indian Statistical Institute conducted several surveys in an attempt to identify the socio economic origins of the displaced.

227 the phenomenon was temporary. The terms “refugee” and “displaced” signified that once the conditions in East Bengal stabilized, Hindu minorities would have no reason to seek shelter and relief in India and would return to their homes in East Pakistan. Further, the identification of people as refugees was arguably an attempt to differentiate them from citizens of India.

By mid 1948, the continuing refugee influx into West Bengal had seriously strained the relief and rehabilitation resources of the state. In the face of their inability to cope with such high numbers, and all portents indicating continuing numbers, the state devised various means to limit their responsibility for refugees.

Initially the central Indian state fixed the date by which a migrant could identify himself or herself as a refugee and receive the attendant benefits. In June 1948, a West Bengal

Government Press Note, published in all major newspapers, stated that although there was a lull in migration after the recent Inter-Dominion Conference, the number of refugees was again on the rise.

Government feels that whatever might have been the cause of the exodus in the past, similar situations do not now prevail. There is hardly any communal disturbance in Eastern Pakistan nor have the minority community there any great reason to entertain fear of such disturbance. Therefore the present continued exodus is due to economic causes. Accordingly the Government has decided to notify that persons arriving into this province from Eastern Pakistan after June 25, 1948 will not be entitled to registration as ‘refugees’, nor will they be eligible for such special assistance as may have been planned by the government for the refugees.25

To prove that they had arrived in India before June 25th, refugees now had to provide either ration cards in their names or tokens from district magistrates that recorded their arrival date. B.

C. Roy defended the West Bengal government’s decision as a “preventive measure against further exodus from East Bengal.”26 Such measures did not go unchallenged as the president of

25 HS, 25 June 1948, 3.

26 HS, 26 June 1948, 5.

228 the East Bengal Minority Welfare Committee in Calcutta exclaimed that, “The Press

Note…lightheartedly refers to the ‘economic causes’ of the steadily continuing exodus. These

‘economic causes’ are a direct consequence of Partition on a communal basis.”27 Thus the reason for migration, at least in the mind of the President and others like him, was firmly rooted in the

Partition. In the face of public protest, the West Bengal government was constantly forced to re- define the date by which migrants from East Pakistan could be eligible for refugee slips.

By 1950 it was clear that the refugees from East Pakistan were not likely to return. Thus in addition to fixing a time limit, the central government issued clear instructions to all state governments regarding the specific meaning of the term “refugee.” To obtain rehabilitation assistance granted to refugees, the Government of India identified a “displaced person” to mean,

A person who a) was ordinarily resident of East Bengal but on account of communal disturbances occurring after the 1st day of October 1946, left East Bengal and arrived in West Bengal on or before the 31st of December 1950 and b) has no land in West Bengal which he is the owner and c) has affirmed in an affidavit filed in the office of Relief and Rehabilitation commissioner, West Bengal that he does not intend to return to East Bengal.28

In contrast to the earlier mechanisms of temporary relief, after 1950 there was a definite shift in the view that the migration was reversible. According to the above definition, in addition to migrating from East Pakistan by a specific date, a person also had to declare his intentions of not returning. By becoming a refugee in order to receive the government’s rehabilitation benefits, a refugee not only had to disown his or her ancestral village but also declare that his or her move had been a permanent one.29 The Rehabilitation Ministry evolved detailed instructions on who

27 Ananda Bazar Patrika, 26 June 1948.

28 File: 18R-3/51 B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA.

29 This was in direct contradistinction to the Nehru Liaquat Pact which urged the displaced to return to their natal villages where their citizenship rights would be guaranteed.

229 had rightful access to the benefits. A family could claim refugee status only if the head of the family fit the above definition. Thus it attempted to exclude all those who had followed the traditional path of migration to take advantage of the urban opportunities in Calcutta but now because of the changed political situation and ensuing turmoil, had had their families migrate to

India.30

At times, it was not even an issue of rights of rehabilitation but the question of whether an applicant was qualified to be a citizen of India. The application of an unnamed seaman for relief and rehabilitation is a case in point. Born in Sylhet that was included in East Pakistan, this individual had come to Calcutta in 1947 and then left for Rangoon, Burma in search of a job.

After a three year stay, he returned to Calcutta and declared his intentions of remaining there and had applied for Indian citizenship. His application was rejected on the basis that he could not qualify as a refugee under Article 6 of the Constitution that outlined the rules by which East

Bengali refugees could acquire Indian citizenship.31

A further revision of the definition of a “refugee” in July 1951 sought to include

30 File: 18R-3/51 B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA. In all fairness, authorities also appended a clause that “ If however the RR commissioner or the District officer of the district in which RR facility is sought for is satisfied that even though the head of a family is not a displaced person according to the above definition, the individual status as DP of other members of the family justifies the extension of RR benefits to the family as a whole, he may direct the extension of such benefits in such cases.” However, this left the refugee family at the mercy of the district officer.

31 Article 6 of the Indian Constitution charts the rights of citizenship of ‘certain persons who have migrated to India from Pakistan. According to the Indian constitution, a person who has migrated to the territory of India from the territory now included in Pakistan shall be deemed to be a citizen of India at the commencement of this Constitution if (a) he or either of his parents or any of his grand-parents was born in India as defined in the Government of India Act, 1935 (as originally enacted); and (b) (i) in the case where such person has so migrated before the nineteenth day of July, 1948, he has been ordinarily resident in the territory of India since the date of his migration, or (ii) in the case where such person has so migrated on or after the nineteenth day of July, 1948, he has been registered as a citizen of India by an officer appointed in that behalf by the Government of the Dominion of India on an application made by him therefore to such officer before the commencement of this Constitution in the form and manner prescribed by that Government: Provided that no person shall be so registered unless he has been resident in the territory of India for at least six months immediately preceding the date of his application. The , Government of India, 1950, http://www.constitution.org/cons/india/const.html; Internet; accessed 15 April 2005.

230 a person ordinarily resident in the territories now comprising East Pakistan or being a Bengalee in the territories now comprising other parts of Pakistan or in an Indian state which is not an acceding state who has since 1st June 1947 arrived from the said territories or state in a place in west Bengal on account of civil disturbances or fear of such disturbances or the Partition of India, and intends to take up his permanent residence in the state of west Bengal in the union of India.32

Initially it appears that this modification widened and encompassed all those migrants who had moved across borders not only during the immediate post-Partition turmoil but also those who had moved after the “civil disturbances” from 1949 to 1950. The West Bengal government also sought to provide relief and rehabilitation to those who had crossed the border from East

Pakistan to neighboring states such as Assam and Tripura before making their way to West

Bengal. However, such modifications came with a string of clauses which aimed to exclude those who had moved before June 1947 unless they had been residents of the riot torn districts of

Noakhali and Tipperah, in which case the beginning date of migration was taken to be 1 October

1946. All government employees who had opted for India would be excluded from rehabilitation benefits.

The status of the head of the family continued to be the primary criteria for any refugee family. Since migration in this region often followed the traditional pattern of the eldest able male crossing the border and finding employment, with the crucial difference that, after Partition, he tended to be accompanied by his family. Relief and rehabilitation benefits thus were focused only towards those families who not only crossed the border as a whole but also continued to remain destitute until they sought government aid.

32Note dated 10 July 1951, Signed by Assistant Secretary, Rehabilitation Branch, RR Department in File: 18R-3/51 B Home Political GOWB, Proceedings 168-171, 1951, WBSA. Emphasis added.

231 Paradigm of Violence in State Discourse

The violence of the Punjab riots between 1947 and 1948 and the resulting migration of refugees from the west demanded significant economic and human resources from the new

Indian state. Already inundated with more refugees than it could handle, the Indian state was straining to provide for those crossing the border in the east. As the Partition in the east did not appear to be accompanied by cataclysmic communal violence which necessitated permanent migration, Indian authorities offered only temporary relief to migrants in the east. The relief and later rehabilitation policies were formulated within a paradigm of cataclysmic violence that took the Punjab riots as the quintessential model. Consequently Indian policies ignored the small scale and sporadic violence that had become part of everyday life for minorities in both India and East

Pakistan.

Official representations of a less violent Bengal Partition were key to the attempts of the

Indian state to prevent and regulate the refugee migration and limit their relief and rehabilitation responsibilities. On the one hand, the state aimed to project itself as paternalistic and humanitarian by continuing to offer relief until 1950 and formulating rehabilitation schemes based on the political and economic conditions in East Pakistan. On the other hand, it had to face the reality that refugee migration from East Pakistan had severely circumscribed its economic resources. Limiting refugee status thus became a crucial, if partial, solution to the “problem.”

Embedded within such definitions was the belief that political and social circumstances in the

East Pakistan were normal and did not warrant large-scale migration. Daily communal violence targeting minorities seemed inconsequential when compared to the devastating riots of Punjab during 1947-48. The Indian state had early on identified the refugee migration as a “problem” and in the later decades Indian leaders in New Delhi projected West Bengal as a “problem”

232 province. For example, a cartoon in Amrita Bazar Patrika showed B. C. Roy, who was a physician by profession and Vallabhbhai Patel, examining an anthropomorphic West Bengal who was suffering from “refugee-titis.” 33

The official policy of both India and Pakistan was to deny violence in the east.

The migration of Hindu minorities called into question the credibility of the East Pakistan state that seemed unable to guarantee citizenship rights to its minorities.34 Although some East

Pakistan leaders such as Hamidul Haq Chowdhury, the Finance Minister in East Bengal, denied the existence of any large-scale migration,35 others such as Nazimuddin, the Provincial Premier, contended that the agents of land development companies based in West Bengal had triggered the migration of minority Hindus. These agents “were at work inducing feeling of insecurity among non-Muslims of East Bengal so that they would migrate to West Bengal and thereby enable such companies to make money out of their business. They have been known to manufacture stories and cause incidents the authorship of which is maliciously ascribed to

Muslims.”36 Nazimuddin’s claim reflected the official policy of denying any harassment or violence toward minorities. For the East Pakistan government, refuting incidents of violence

33 ABP, 14 January 1950, 5. See Appendix 1(f).

34 The situation was different in East Pakistan compared to West Pakistan as the former continued to have a substantial percentage of non-Muslims who resided there.

35 Hamidul Haq Chowdhury clearly denied any allegations that minority Hindus were going away because of physical violence, kidnapping, abduction and forcible conversions. He further added, “If however a man does not want to reconcile himself to Pakistan and wants to leave the Dominion, he cannot be prevented.” HS, 1 November 1948, 3.

36 File: 12C-3 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 399, July 1949, BNA.

233 allowed it to dissociate itself from the causes of migration and assert that there was a “natural attraction of the Hindus for the Hindu majority Indian Union.”37

Coupled with the claim that the minorities had a “natural” predilection towards India that surpassed traditional ties to their land and society, the East Pakistan government also accused minorities of fabricating stories of violence against them. An intelligence report from Dacca noted that, “There are several instances in which the minority community has been known to manufacture stories and cause incidents, the authorship of which was ascribed to the majority community.” 38 The Superintendent of Police in Backerganj reported multiple incidents of breaking of Durga images in his district that upon investigation was found that some Hindus in the area desirous of migrating to West Bengal were found to have perpetrated. He claimed that all the images had remained untouched between “Shasthi (the day of Pratishtan, to infuse life) and the Dasami (the day of immersion), as it is sinful for a Hindu according to Hindu religion to break any image during the said period. But prior to that when the images are in the process of making there is no such religious bar.”39 His report concluded that some Hindus of the area, who sought to create panic among the minorities who remained in East Pakistan, had desecrated the images.

The migration of minorities became a symbolic blueprint in discerning the efforts that respective governments took toward ensuring rights of citizenship to minorities. After the 1950 riots, , the Premier of East Bengal, denied any instances of communal tension in

Eastern Bengal. He simultaneously accused the West Bengal government to facilitating easier

37 Najimuddin’s answer given to unstarred question in the East Bengal Legislative Assembly by Jatindra Nath Bhadra, MLA enquiring about the causes for the evacuation of the minority community from East Bengal. 2 April 1948. File 12C-3 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings, 399, July 1949, BNA.

38 Report dated 8.4.1948 in File 12C-9 of 1948, Home Political B Proceedings 940, April 1953, BNA.

39 Ibid.

234 cross border movement that was inhibiting the return to normalcy in the region.40 At one level, the Indian state undercut any connections between the migration of the East Bengali refugees with any experience of legitimate violence, while at another level their very act of migration became a watermark in gauging the stability and the consequent legitimacy of the East Pakistan state.

Indian officials and political leaders identified several reasons for the migration including threats to honor and religion, economic sanctions against minorities and general instability in the region. After the riots of 1950, Shyama Prasad Mookerjee asserted that,

Since independence it may be that the figure (of those coming from East Bengal) stands at about four millions. Nearly two millions of these were expelled not by personal persecution and danger to life, but by the systematic preference for Muslim employment in the professions and retail trade and petty business which was studied policy of the Pakistan government.41

Indian officials sought to dissociate between actual physical violence perpetrated on the body and psychological violence characterized as irrational fears and hardships. In their opinion the latter did not necessitate permanent migration across international borders. Simultaneously, highlighting such reasons questioned Pakistan’s nationhood at its core.

For the Indian state already inundated by refugees from West Pakistan, such chronic and continuous migration was a burdensome responsibility. To discourage migration from the east, the Indian state focused on the lack of violence in East Pakistan as compared to Punjab and identified the cause of migration as psychological insecurities brought about by socio-economic

40 In the Press Report titled “No Cause for Exodus from East Bengal”, Premier Nurul Amin wrote, “My Government wish to state in unmistakable terms that there is now no cause whatever for the evacuation or exodus of the minority community from this province…. These special facilities [air lifts] and.…Statements such as that of Dr. Roy are bound to encourage the exodus and retard the return to normal conditions in East and West Bengal.” The Statesman, 24 February 1950, 5.

41 Shyamaprasad Mookerjee, “Piercing the Pact,” Eastern Economist, Vol. XV, no. 6 (New Delhi, August 11, 1950), in SPM Papers, No. 5, NMML. Italics in original.

235 conditions in East Pakistan. India officials publicly identified the migrants as suffering from a

“psychological” problem of insecurity and the Indian state sought to differentiate those who suffered violence from those who feared violence. This distinction privileged physical violence whose victims could substantiate their narratives with the tangible marks of violence. In the

Amrita Bazar Patrika, Satish Chandra Dasgupta, a well-known Congress member, claimed that

“if enquiries are made about those who are evacuating, generally the reply is that nothing has happened but there was fear of aggression and insult. Fear there is. But fear is a mental attitude.”42 He argued that the current food crisis in West Bengal had been exacerbated by the influx of the East Bengal Hindus. Consequently, such migration rendered the Hindu minorities as potential economic abusers. To prevent the exploitation of the strained economic resources in

West Bengal, Dasgupta depicted the migrants as “guests” whose presence should be temporary.

He continued, “It may be said the East Bengal Hindus would expect hospitality from West

Bengal people as their guests. But guests are guests. They come and go. They do not settle down to share the house with the host for ever.”43 A few days earlier Dasgupta wrote to the East

Pakistan Prime Minister, Nazimuddin, and urged the need for official measures to contain the flight of the evacuees from East Pakistan. However, rather than the usual instructions on the maintenance of law and order in East Bengal, Dasgupta noted that current migration mainly of people belonging to the middle classes was “dictated by personal likes and dislikes.” He feared that if the West Bengal government promised resettlement then it would be a “direct invitation to them [the evacuees] to come to West Bengal…Then despite all the preaching against mass evacuation more and more evacuees will be encouraged to come and demand of the West Bengal

42 S. C. Dasgupta, “Residential of East Bengal Hindus,” ABP, 13 April 1948, 4.

43 Ibid.

236 government the promised amenities.”44 He proposed that Indian government should use its resources to facilitate the return of the evacuees to East Pakistan instead of rehabilitating them in

West Bengal. For Dasgupta, the conditions in East Bengal did not warrant any mass evacuation.

Dasgupta’s observations echoed some of the sentiments evolving in West Bengal toward the continuing migration. Commenting on the widely discrepant figures for the migration that the Congress leaders announced, a reader of the Amrita Bazar Patrika noted,

The average person West Bengal and particularly of Calcutta town is however, feeling the brunt of the exodus. Foodstuffs are becoming more scarce and costlier. Accommodation difficulties have become a menace; apart from the avarice and harassments of the owners of houses and of fallow lands on which some sort of hutments could be raised the congestion is likely soon to endanger sanitation.45

Although this letter concluded with an indictment of the Government’s meager and unorganized efforts toward relief and rehabilitation of these refugees, it also outlined the critical problems of space and resources which the people of West Bengal were now forced to share with the refugees. In addition, the congestion of refugees had increased Calcutta’s health risks by ensuring that it was “fast becoming a large scale TB sanatorium.”46 Indeed, the West Bengal and

Indian governments were aware of such health risks and ensured that tuberculosis inoculation was part of the primary and immediate relief measures at the border centers and refugee camps.

A Press Note published in July 1948, within one year of the Partition, similarly stated in clear terms that the West Bengal government did not desire that the East Bengalis leave their homes. However, the Press Note warned, if they “persist in coming they will not merely

44 Satish Chandra Dasgupta, “Rehabilitation of East Bengal Evacuees in East Bengal,” dated 29 March, 1948, File: 12-E-1, Home Political B Proceedings 59-61, July 1948, BNA.

45 ABP, 13 March 1948, 4.

46 Ibid.

237 embarrass this government but will also greatly endanger their own health and welfare.”47 In all these pronouncements there was an implicit belief that this migration was preventable and unwarranted.

Dasgupta was not alone in deeming physical violence as the principal reason for legitimate migration. Government spokesmen such as Sri Prakash, the Indian High

Commissioner in Pakistan, emphatically noted that, “the real reason [for the migration] lies in the fact that the Hindus feel spiritually hurt when they are told that they are no longer Indians.”48 In his analysis of the causes for the migration, Sri Prakash emphasized “age old connections, social and political ties [which] have made the whole of India the common home of Indians living in any part of the country.”49 Echoing the Indian government’s warped logic, he privileged patriotic national identity over ties to one’s regional community and locality, the very ties that in the official view had ensured that the Partition in the east did not experience any cataclysmic riots.

Thus even when migration maybe attributed to issues of identity, it was robbed of any association with violence or fear of violence.

In the aftermath of the 1950 riots in East Pakistan, the Indian government sent high-level delegation to East Bengal to gauge the communal situation and to provide what they termed as

“security in the minds” of the Hindu minorities who continued to reside across the border. Charu

Chandra Biswas, the Minister for Minorities in the Interim Government of India and later the

Union Law Minister in independent India,50 asserted that, “Little more was happening in East

Bengal than occasional incidents, many of which one could expect in the ordinary course of

47 HS, 1 August 1948, 3.

48HS, 16 May 1948, 8.

49 Ibid.

50 A prominent lawyer and judge, Biswas was also a member of the Bengal Boundary Commission in 1947.

238 crime. The trouble was that in the present state of Hindu morale, every incident was felt to be communal – the theft of a chicken was taken as a warning of worse to come.”51 At one end

Biswas concluded that there was indeed a general feeling of insecurity which only the East

Pakistan Government could ameliorate, while on the other end, as a representative of the Indian state, he attempted to cast doubts on the refugee narratives of actual violence.

As the refugees carried tales of small scale and personal violence to India and the newspapers in West Bengal continued to highlight instances of loot and murder, the Indian and

West Bengal governments consistently urged the refugees to return to East Pakistan. This response triggered allegations of a differential attitude towards these refugees as compared to those arriving from West Pakistan. In its editorial in April 1948, the Jai Hind, an English daily, argued that,

We have never heard of such arguments [for return] when the government of India were themselves evacuating Hindus from West Punjab, Sind and NWFP. There is obviously sympathy and understanding for the Hindus of the West Punjab, Sind and NWFP and of Kashmir and Hyderabad, but none whatsoever for the Hindus of East Bengal. Instead of help and sympathy they receive lectures and are coldly asked to go back to or stay in Pakistan.52

Relief and rehabilitation measures of the Indian government operated within a limited paradigm of violence and victimhood. The Government of India’s definition of a Partition refugee also implicitly required one to be a victim of violence. The Census of 1951 that first differentiated between displaced migrants and ordinary economic migrants defined the former as “ a person who came to India (having left or been compelled to leave his home in Western Pakistan on or after 1st March 1947, or his home in East Pakistan on or after 15th October, 1946) on account of civil disturbances or the fear of such disturbances, or on account of setting up of the two

51 Manchester Guardian, 18 June 1950, File 12 P-26, Home Political B Proceedings 41-58, September 1951, BNA.

52 Jai Hind, 17 April 1948.

239 dominions of India and Pakistan.”53 Such a definition required violence or the fear of violence as the necessary corollary to migration and refugee rehabilitation in India. However, even while the

State identified “fear” of violence as a credible reason for migration, understandably it was unwilling to define the exact parameters of what such a “fear” would be to merit rehabilitation in

India.

After the riots of 1950, which witnessed the highest peak in migration between India and

East Pakistan, both countries urged their respective minorities to return home and officially guaranteed their security upon their return. However, they lacked both manpower and finances to ensure the effective implementation of such promises. Immediately after the conclusion of the

Pact of 1950, newspapers such as The Statesman began to report daily on the number of migrants who returned home.54 The statistics, which remain questionable since they do not cite any sources, usually showed the outflow to be higher than the inflow, thereby proving the success of the Pact. Such goals were achieved only on paper as the migration continued unabated from East

Pakistan. For those who did return to East Pakistan, conditions did not improve. They shifted back to India after disposing of their properties.

Politics of Rehabilitation

Confronted with the continuing tide of refugees, the Indian and West Bengal governments introduced new methods to tackle the “problem” and to continue rehabilitation. A close examination of some of the relief and rehabilitation policies of the Indian state reveals how such measures, as central tools which constructed the new nation’s paternal image,

53 Census of India, 1951, Paper No. 4 on Displaced Persons, (New Delhi: Manager of Publications, GOI, 1954), 1.

54 See reports published in The Statesman between June and December 1950. A government Press Note to this effect was published in Ananda Bazar Patrika, 5 September 1950.

240 simultaneously had to deal with the economic factors of rehabilitating refugees. In the process, the Indian state’s interventions and interactions with the “migrants” in the east led to the evolution of a specific “refugee” identity in the east.

To emphasize the numerical impact of the Partition, the Government of India used its publicity division to issue pamphlets and brochures that documented the number of refugees with pictures of long lines of men and women with their meager belongings at the border. Often with captions such as “Millions on the Move”55 or “The Unending Trail” these publicity documents at one level aimed to convince the public that the Indian government was doing its humanitarian best to care for such large numbers. At a more implicit level, these depictions also performed the task of representing the migration as “influx” or “exodus” and after the 1965 India-Pakistan war as “infiltration.” These migrations and demands for relief and rehabilitation represented a constant impediment to the normal development of Indian economy and society.56 Such a continuous process understandably strained the resources of the new state that could not contain the relief and rehabilitation of these refugees within one concentrated period.57

To tackle the needs of refugees in an organized manner, the West Bengal government had established an independent Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department in mid June 1949.58 In addition it commissioned several surveys that attempted to provide data on the magnitude of the

55 Millions on the Move: The Aftermath of the Partition, Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (Delhi: Government of India, 1949).

56 Rao noted that this “unending trail … tells of the constant stream of desperate, fear crazed people, drained of the last drop of hope, that pours into this country from east Pakistan. When will this stream dry up?” U Bhaskar Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation, Department of Rehabilitation, Ministry of Labour, Employment and Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1967), 143.

57 Official reports on rehabilitation of the east Bengali refugees always began with outlining the two main difficulties – chronic unending migration and lack of space – which restricted the success of their efforts. Relief and Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, Home (Publicity) Department on behalf of the Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department (Calcutta: Government of West Bengal, 1956).

58 B. C. Roy personally oversaw the work of this department.

241 task of rehabilitation. At the behest of the West Bengal and Indian governments the Indian

Statistical Institute undertook to quantify the migration from mid 1948.59 In addition, the State

Statistical Bureau in West Bengal undertook surveys in 1951, 1955 and 1956 “to make a correct assessment of the size of the problem of rehabilitation.”60 Even after the riots of 1950, at one level, the Indian government continued to pursue and promote its policy of providing relief

(trankarya) instead of rehabilitation (punarbashan).61 In his visit to Calcutta in March 1950,

Mohanlal Saxena, the GOI Minister for Rehabilitation, instructed the representatives of Tripura,

Assam, Bihar, Orissa and West Bengal to continue to restrict government work to relief. Such a policy was consonant with the aims of the Delhi Pact in April 1950 that urged minorities to return home. Saxena also reasoned that unless and until the actual dimensions of the migration were gauged, it would not be possible for the Indian government to devise any plans for permanent rehabilitation. In 195, Mehr Chand Khanna, the Minister for Rehabilitation after

Saxena, reportedly noted, “We will try to provide for the four million here (eastern region) as we did for the million in the Punjab. The only trouble is that I am never sure that four million is the final figure. Our planning is at the mercy of the Pakistan government. We provide for five thousand refugees; instead, fifty thousand are turned out. What are we to do?” 62

Official attempts at rehabilitation on a permanent basis crystallized in the mid-1950s.

These rehabilitation schemes were divided into rural assistance programs targeting mainly the agriculturalists and urban resettlement programs geared towards providing homestead land in

59 N. C. Chakravarti, Report on the Survey of Refugee Population in West Bengal, 1948 (Calcutta, 1949).

60 Rehabilitation of Refugees: A Statistical Survey, State Statistical Bureau (Calcutta: GOWB, 1956), 2, cited in Kanti Pakrashi, The Uprooted (Calcutta: Editions Indian, 1971).

61 Hiranmay Bandyopadhya, Udvaastu (Calcutta: Sahitya Sansad, 1970), 59-60.

62 Reported in Rao, The Story of Rehabilitation, 146.

242 government sanctioned colonies. In the Calcutta region, the government helped to expand civic amenities to the refugee settlements, and townships such as Ultadanga, Sodepur, Bijoygarh,

Mahdyamgram came into existence. The West Bengal government also regularized squatter colonies which had arisen by the end of December 1950. 63 Permanent rehabilitation to the refugees primarily involved the task of finding land for these refugees.64 The Partition and the consequent demographic changes and boundary adjustments, both in the east and the west, had ensured that West Bengal became the most densely populated state within India. Moreover, in terms of Muslim evacuee property, West Bengal did not have much to offer as most Muslims who moved to East Pakistan did not hold land in West Bengal. The West Bengal government consistently deemed that the state lacked the fiscal resources and the land to accommodate and rehabilitate the incoming refugees.

In 1955 Ray, the State Rehabilitation Minister, categorically declared that “We have reached a saturation point and whereas we must satisfactorily help to settle those who have come earlier, it is beyond the capacity and powers of this state to provide land for cultivators and even for homesteads in urban areas for those who are new comers and will still continue to come.”65 The solution had to come from incorporating state level relief and rehabilitation measures with the “national level” and in urging other states to share the responsibility. Besides requesting states such as Bihar, Orissa and Assam to assist in rehabilitation, the Indian government also identified areas such as the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and the

63 A detailed account of the politics of squatter’s colonies is provided in Chatterjee, Midnight’s Unwanted Children, Chapters 4 and 5.

64 Most of the later refugees were agriculturalists. Kanti Pakrashi provides a sociological and statistical analysis of the composition of the refugees between 1946 and 1970. Kanti Pakrashi, The Uprooted, 24.

65 Speech given to welcome the Union Minister for Relief and Rehabilitation at a function organized by the Dumdum Rajerghat Rehabilitation and Welfare Board, Calcutta. 7 August 1955, in Papers, File: 27, NMML.

243 Dandyakaranya in central India as potential regions for the rehabilitation of East Bengali refugees. Although Bihar and Orissa were initially favorable to the idea of rehabilitating the refugees, inter-state plans were rarely implemented. For example, Assam was reluctant to resettle

East Bengali refugees who might further complicate the concurrent problems “Bengali-

Assamese” identities in the region.66

To arrange the settlement of refugees in the Andamans, the Government of India undertook explicit campaigns in the media that highlighted the positive features of the islands.

Nikunja Behari Maity, the Relief Minister of West Bengal and the leader of the Indian

Exploratory Party to the , submitted a press report extolling the virtues of the islands for immediate settlement. According to the report, not only was “the climate of the

Andamans is [sic] wet and humid,” but an agricultural survey conducted by government appointed experts pointed to “large possibilities for settlement by those who take to cultivation or fishery as their principal occupation.”67 Maity’s report emphasized all those aspects of livelihood to which the refugees would have been accustomed in their original residence in East Bengal.

Moreover, the Bengali refugee would supposedly be free of diseases common to the Bengal delta such as plague, small pox, and, most importantly, malaria. The islands, in official depiction, were idyllic for colonization.

Meager rehabilitation assistance coupled with the history of the Andamans as a penal colony soon elicited a reverse migration of those who had earlier decided to accept the government’s aid. Refugees in Dandyakaranya, in central India, also began to return in the 1960s

66 The correspondence between Nehru and Gopinath Bardoloi, the Chief minister of Assam at the time, clearly outlines Assam’s views with regard to the East Bengali refugees. Nehru to Bardoloi, Jawaharlal Nehru Selected Works, vol. 6 letter dated 29 May 1948, 118; Nehru to Bardoloi, JNSW, vol. 11, letter dated 18 May 1949, 70-2; Also see Nehru’s note entitled “Migration from East Bengal to Assam’ JNSW, vol. 7, 21 July 1948, 67-8.

67 “The Andamans of Today,” MR, vol. 85, March 1949, 216.

244 and demand rehabilitation within West Bengal.68 Instead of acknowledging such problems as barren soil and the lack of agricultural tools in areas that often experienced drought in the successful implementation of rehabilitation, official discourse viewed the return of the refugees from other states as related to the parochial character of the Bengalis.

Even as the Indian government sanctioned financial assistance for West Bengal in the form of soft loans towards education, vocational training, efforts to curb the migration continued.

By 1952 the West Bengal government set up elaborate machinery to control its border in the east. It continued to narrow its definition of a refugee. By 1955 migration by itself was no longer a valid reason to secure relief and rehabilitation. The refugees had to provide documentation to prove not only their migration but also their victimhood. It included migration certificates, refugee slips and citizenship papers from Pakistan. If the person had none of these documents then “their status would be determined on the basis of circumstantial evidence by an officer not below the rank of a subdivisional magistrate.”69 Ironically, the more the West Bengal state aimed to categorize and identify legitimate refugees or displaced persons, the more difficult it became for those minorities who wanted to cross the border. The institution of migration certificates, which the Indian High Commission at Dacca issued, ostensibly was to sift out the legitimate victims of violence from those who wanted to migrate to India because of economic reasons.70 It is not clear how the High Commission determined such victimization. Even when the Indian

68 For a detailed account of the public campaign to bring the refugees back to West Bengal from Dandyakaranya, see Gyanesh Kudaisya, “Divided Landscapes, Fragmented Identities,” in The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia, 148- 162. Also see Durgadasa Acarya, Udvastu Dandyakaranya o Andamana (Calcutta: Indian Progressive Publishing Company, 1978).

69 Summary of the Recommendations made by the conference of the rehabilitation ministers from the eastern state held at Darjeeling on 20 to 22 October 1955, Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 1955-56, Appendix A, 87, The conference also declared that no person migrating after the 15 October 1952 should be recognized as a displaced person unless he produced a migration certificate.

70 File#1/1/56-FIII, M/O Home Affairs, GOI, 1956, NAI.

245 state sought to identify legitimate applicants for the migration certificates, its guidelines were inflected by the state’s paternalistic assumptions. Thus, it instructed the Deputy High

Commission in Dacca to issue migration certificates to:

i) Orphans with no guardians in East Pakistan ii) Unattached women and widows with no means of livelihood in East Pakistan iii) Grown up girls coming to India for marriage (the migration certificates in such cases were to be issued only to the girls concerned). iv) Wives joining husbands in India v) Families living in isolated parts vi) Members of split families a part of which has already settled in India vii) Persons, whose near relatives are in India.71

The above list reflects not only the Indian state’s paternal concern for unattached women and children, but also followed the general pattern of migration that was a unique feature of post

1947 in Bengal. By assuring that priority would be given to such cases, the Indian authorities in effect legitimized certain kinds of migration and sought to control movement of specific groups.

In the absence of any major riots between 1950 and 1964 the Indian state was convinced that economic factors stimulated migration in the eastern border. By 1956 the Indian government in an effort to stop the migration began to close its relief camps.72 By 1958 the West Bengal government followed its lead and shut down most of its relief camps and stopped all financial assistance. The Indian state also declared that anyone crossing the border after 1958 would no longer be legally recognized by the state as a “refugee.”73 In effect, there was a clear re- orientation of planning and implementation of rehabilitation schemes occurred from 1958.

71 Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1964-65), 6.

72 At a conference between Central (Union ministers for Finance, Law and Rehabilitation) and State (chief minister and rehabilitation minister of West Bengal) ministers held at Calcutta on 3rd and 4th July, it was decided that by 31st July 1959, all camps would be closed down. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1958-59), 9.

73 This changed with the riots of 1964 when the displaced were given permanent refuge in India through the civil war in Pakistan in 1971 after which East Pakistan seceded to become the state of Bangladesh.

246 Subsequently Government of India undertook large-scale measures that sought to integrate rehabilitation with the development of the Indian economy.74

The shift in the Indian government’s policies towards East Bengali refugees from relief to rehabilitation signified the official acknowledgement that this migration was permanent. The

Indian government, however, justified these dilatory attempts toward rehabilitation with the argument that government relief in the form of doles and temporary stays in relief camps had created demoralized and lazy refugees. A 1956 report on relief and rehabilitation of the refugees indicated that “In order to counteract the demoralizing effect of prolonged stay in camps,

Government introduced the system of keeping able-bodied men engaged in useful work in places meant for ultimate rehabilitation of the camp people, where they helped in the development of the area.”75 In fact, these relief camps were “symbols of continuing dependence.” Government officials feared that the able-bodied males within refugee camps would become accustomed to the meager relief, which would erode their moral fiber and produce a culture of dependency.

They argued that the refugee population “living on the charity of doles, and in the process of sinking into a state of hopeless demoralization” needed to have “their self respect and self reliance” restored as soon as was possible.76 Rehabilitation rather than relief alone was the only way such an end could be achieved.77

74 Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1958-59), 3-4.

75 Relief and Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, Home (Publicity) Department, on behalf of the Refugee Relief and Rehabilitation Department (Government of West Bengal, 1956), 2. Emphasis added.

76 U Bhaskar Rao, Story of Rehabilitation, 160.

77 At a conference of State and Central ministers in Calcutta in July 1958, it was decided that all camps in the eastern region would be closed down by July 1959.

247 The Indian state defined rehabilitation “as a process of reinstating or reestablishing one in the esteem of others.”78 Thus rehabilitation would be the “coping stone” of the Indian state’s humanitarian aid and lead to the moral and economic uplift of the refugees. U Bhaskar Rao, who was closely connected with the official rehabilitation process, pointed out that providing relief had only been half of the planned efforts at aiding the refugees. The other half consisted of the

“rehabilitation of the hundreds of thousands of people uprooted by the cataclysm,” and restoring

“something like their former dignity.”79 From the 1950s migrants were taken directly from reception centers to worksite camps, “where they are provided with work. This helps to check indolence and demoralization.”80 Rehabilitation measures directed towards East Pakistani refugees were usually couched within the development rhetoric of the new nation which sought to create new hardworking citizens.81

Through the decades of implementing rehabilitation schemes and establishing refugee colonies, the Government of India continued to be concerned about creating ideal citizens instead of idle camp refugees. A publicity booklet, which evaluated the ongoing rehabilitation of the

East Pakistani refugees, noted that,

Idleness is the greatest enemy of the refugee. And because the government is keenly aware of it, endeavor is made to keep the camp population engaged, as far as possible, in useful work connected either with the development of eventual rehabilitation sites, if these are nearby or in the many river valley and industrial projects now in the process of implementation in India.82

78 U. Bhashkar Rao, Story of Rehabilitation, 48.

79 Ibid.

80 Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1955-56), 4.

81 Joya Chatterji has argued that the Indian state constructed the relief and rehabilitation measures as charity rather than under any obligation towards the refugees. Joya Chatterji, “Right or Charity? The Debate over Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal, 1947-50”, in Suvir Kaul, ed. The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (New Delhi: Permanent Black, 2002), 84

82 And still the trek continues, 16

248

These development projects were temporary and at times seasonal in nature. Moreover, the

Indian State had limited its capacity to provide such employment for every male who crossed the border. It strongly believed in the adage of an empty mind being the devil’s workshop, and ensured, in areas where it was difficult to find work for the refugee males, that they were

“gainfully” employed. To make certain that these refugees remained active at all times, the

Indian government also provided “other types of employment such as tent-making, basket making and brick manufacturing in these worksite camps.”83 Continuing their effort to re-make demoralized refugees into “disciplined, self reliant workers and useful citizens” the Indian

Government constituted the Rashtriya Vikas Dal Scheme in 1964. Its stated aims were on the one hand to “provide disciplined workers for the execution of development projects” and on the other hand to “provide gainful employment to migrants.”84 The Indian government argued that membership and participation within this scheme would “instill the habit of manual work in the migrants and propagate among them the ideal of dignity of labor.”85 Thus the state’s efforts towards rehabilitation were designed not only towards economic rehabilitation but also aimed to reinstill the moral virtues of hard work that the refugees seemingly had lost by their act of seeking help within relief camps. Although this particular scheme was not specifically targeted towards the refugees from East Pakistan, in its implementation it involved significant number of camps where the East Pakistani refugees had been relocated.86

83 Relief and Rehabilitation of Displaced Persons in West Bengal, 2.

84 Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation (New Delhi: Government of India, 1966-67), 50.

85 Ibid.

86 For example, out of the 1790 sahakaris (as these workers were called) deployed for rehabilitation, 187 were from Dandyakaranya Projects, 495 from the Andamans and 314 from the Chanda project in , where the main inhabitants were the “new migrants” from East Pakistan. Ibid. 50-51.

249 Implicit within the government’s efforts towards rehabilitation was the paternalism of a state geared towards enmeshing development with the moral virtues of humanitarianism. In this role, the state sought to define itself as a caregiver and savior of the refugees. A report assessing the “success” of the efforts of the ministry of rehabilitation, thus concluded “throughout the last eighteen and nineteen years, under each rehabilitation programme Government have made efforts to extend to all categories of displaced people a degree of assistance which together with their own enterprise and self help, would enable them to achieve access to a level of livelihood comparable to prevailing standards in India.” The official claim was that the state had been responsible in turning these refugees into “useful citizens” in their new communities. 87

Clearly by 1964, the government no longer asked the refugees to declare loyalty to Pakistan.

Rather, in a discursive way, these refugees by their very presence and continuous migration gave legitimacy to the stability of India vis a vis East Pakistan. By promoting the creed of “refugees turned citizens” the Indian state could claim to consolidate its successful benevolent image.

Nowhere was the state’s role as the caregiver more apparent than in the case of those they termed as “permanent liability.” In this group belonged the old and infirm, unattached women, either unmarried or widowed, and orphans.88 In providing homes for unattached women and their dependents, the Indian state arguably assumed the role of the male provider. Like the men, the state sought to introduce the women to a work ethic “to keep them busy.” Vocational training for these women concentrated on the traditional women’s occupation such as needlework and arts and crafts. The Indian state also instituted a provocatively titled National Discipline Scheme in

87 Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry, 22.

88 According to official estimates, around 53232 persons fell within this category by and were in various government-instituted homes. And Still the Trek Continues, 16.

250 its eastern and the western borders, “In order to bring the younger generation under a code of discipline and to infuse in them the ideals of good citizenship and comradeship.”89 In their efforts to provide physical and spiritual training of displaced children, the government specially trained instructors who were either ex- Indian National Army (INA) members or servicemen. They were to ensure that the children were disciplined in mind and body through physical drills and were

“informed about the country’s glorious past, its cultural heritage and the deeds of valour and chivalry of our ancestors.”90 Nationalism had found ready ground for dissemination. In instituting rehabilitation measures targeting these “permanent liability” groups, the Indian state recreated the familial traditions of paternalism where the eldest able-bodied male takes care of the women, children and the old in the national family.

The Bengali Refugee: Victim of Violence or Economic Migrant

During the 1960s and 1970s, the official discourse on the Government of India’s efforts at rehabilitation described it in terms of heroism and unflinching endeavor in the face of indomitable odds. Bhaskar Rao described the role of the Indian state in rehabilitation as an

“indefatigable effort to bring healing to these bruised masses of humanity, wipe their tears, apply balm to their wounds, assuage their hunger and thirst, clothe their nakedness. And more, to set them on their feet and restore to them the dignity of man.”91 Such self-congratulatory remarks at one level elevated, established and enhanced the status of the Indian state as the primary donor for all refugees. At another level, it reiterated the portrayal of the refugees as victims of fate, who

89 This scheme was the brainchild of J. K. who was the Deputy Minister of Rehabilitation in 1955. Around 7,000 children participated in this program in West Bengal out of 40,000. Report, Ministry of Rehabilitation, 1955- 56, 12-13.

90 Ibid.

91 Story of Rehabilitation, 1-2.

251 required the Indian state’s help to regain their “human dignity.” Thus newspapers and official publicity documents consistently focused on the women and children in their depictions of the refugees from East Pakistan.92

In assessing the “success” of various schemes that the government had undertaken to integrate the East Bengali refugees into the new nation, a report to the Lahiry commission in

1964 concluded that the government had, since 1947, recognized the rehabilitation of the displaced as a national problem. By 1964, the Indian government implicitly acknowledged their paternal role and traced the history of such paternalism to an early response towards rehabilitation from 1947. The government clearly considered the complaints against its meager relief efforts, limited financial assistance towards East Bengali refugees and late start on rehabilitation as specious hair-splitting. In providing shelter and “succor in salvaging remnants of their shattered lives,” the report noted that the progress of rehabilitating the refugees from East

Pakistan had been slow, difficult and uneven “by reason of both nature and magnitude.”93

However, the report continued, “But as all concerned, both inside and outside Government, with rehabilitation work must be aware, the sustained and wide ranging efforts of both the government of India and the government of West Bengal for the resettlement of the lakhs of displaced people who have continued to pour into India at intervals in 1947, have achieved a considerable degree of success in spite of the complexity and massive dimensions of the whole problem.” 94 While acknowledging that rehabilitation efforts had been limited in their ability to help the refugees, this official assessment suggests that such limitations lay in the fact of

92See Appendix 1(h) of this dissertation.

93 Statement of the Ministry of Labour Employment and Rehabilitation (Department of Rehabilitation) to the Lahiri Commission of Inquiry, 22

94 Ibid.

252 overwhelming numbers of refugees themselves rather than in faulty mechanisms of the rehabilitation machinery.

The Indian state alternatively represented the East Bengal refugee as troublemakers, lazy, economically needy and parochial. Such a representation arguably allowed the state to shift blame from their own failures at rehabilitation to the ‘inherent’ nature of the Bengali refugees.

Any criticism, limitations or evidence of failure of the rehabilitation schemes did not find place within official documentation.95 Where it was difficult not to acknowledge the problems, official rhetoric pointed a finger at the inherent nature of the refugees themselves. For instance, after the riots of 1950, the arrival of a large number of refugees strained the space and economic resources of West Bengal, especially in Calcutta. Instead of waiting for the government aid, some refugees decided to undertake self rehabilitation by taking possession of empty World War II military barracks and setting up temporary huts in empty land in and around the city.96 These

“jabardakhal” or squatter colonies became sites of contestation between the West Bengal government and the refugees. Instead of seeing them as entrepreneurs, the West Bengal government first tried to evict them through police action. When such measures failed, the government sought to “regularize” these colonies, but not before the protesters had been portrayed as “troublemakers” in leading newspapers. 97

95 However, a close reading of the Council Debates of the West Bengal Legislative Assembly in the years 1952-55 reveals, that the government was aware that its efforts toward rehabilitation remained limited and that resources often did not reach their target population. See Council Debates (Official report), West Bengal Legislative Council, First Session, June – August 1952, vol. I, 51.

96 By December 1950, there were about 149 squatter colonies in the Greater Calcutta metropolitan area. The Government decided to “regularize” these colonies around 1951. For details on Squatter’s Colonies see Pranati Chaudhuri, “Refugees in West Bengal, A Study of the Growth and Distribution of Refugee Settlements within the Calcutta Metropolitan District,” Working Paper no. 55 (Calcutta: CSSS, 1980).

97 The Statesman, 11 November; 3 December 1950, 5.

253 When the refugees protested against inadequate rehabilitation measures in settling them outside of West Bengal and began returning to West Bengal, the Indian government argued that the Bengali refugees were parochial. Reporting on the government’s failure to rehabilitate the

Bengali refugees in other parts of the country such as Orissa and Bihar, the Rehabilitation

Minister, A. P. Jain, noted during his Calcutta tour in January 1951 that, “an important factor that stood in the way of rehabilitation of East Bengal refugees was their disinclination to leave West

Bengal and adapt themselves to new environments in other states…” Further, the East Bengal refugee in Jain’s opinion, “was still unsettled in his mind and had not broken all ties with East

Bengal” and “looked back longingly to his paddy field, his cottage and the natural conditions of that province. Many families were also divided half the number having been left behind.”98 What

Jain did not mention in his speech was the fact that the particular region in Orissa where the refugees were settled had experience famine conditions for the past few years. Instead, psychological insecurities, instead of material conditions were highlighted as the reasons why the rehabilitation of refugees outside of West Bengal had failed.

Central to the Indian state’s paternalistic and humanitarian image was the creation of a specific identity of the refugee as a victim who would unquestioningly and with gratitude accept whatever assistance the state would hand out. In the case of the East Bengali refugees such an understanding of refugeehood was further complicated by the official belief that they were economic migrants and not legitimate victims of violence. By assigning psychological factors such as “insecurity,” “fear” and “panic” as the only plausible causes for migration, the government officials depicted male refugees as effeminate individuals, who had been incapable

98 The Statesman, 22 January 1951, 5.

254 of fighting for their citizenship rights because of their mental weaknesses.99 It was only a short leap to argue that any failure or inadequacies of the rehabilitation mechanisms were not the responsibility of the government but related to the lazy and parochial nature of the refugees themselves. Bhaskar Rao thus described the refugee from East Pakistan as a “creature apart.” In describing government efforts to shut down relief camps and rehabilitate them in spaces outside of West Bengal, Rao blames the psychological makeup of the East Bengali refugees. “The more serious difficulty arose out of a certain psychological weakness or deficiency among the fairly large sections of the camp population. Many showed a reluctance to forgo the advantages of gratuitous relief, a disinclination to embrace the rigorous discipline of an independent existence.”100 Rao argued that although comforts in the camps were meager, “one enjoyed the luxury of idleness.” It was this inherent lazy temperament that made the Bengali refugee impervious to “all inducements” and “cling precariously to their shelters demanding the impossible- rehabilitation in West Bengal.”101

To emphasize this point of psychological ineptitude, official discourse borrowed from the colonial nineteenth century tropes of Bengali effeminacy and martial races. In the 19th century,

British officials had conventionally regarded physical weakness and lack of vigor, lethargy, effeminacy and an absence of moral backbone as the essence of the Bengali male.102 As a counter to this stereotype, another commonly held belief among the colonial rulers had been the

99 In his study of the Punjabi refugees, S. L. Keller also develops a theory which he terms ‘refugee syndrome’ based on the comparative psychology of the Punjabi and Bengali refugee. S. L Keller, Uprooting and Social Change: The Role of Refugees in Development (Delhi: Manohar Book Service, 1975).

100 The Story of Rehabilitation, 155.

101 Ibid., 156.

102 Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity, The ‘Manly’ Englishman and the ‘Effeminate Bengali’ in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995).

255 “martial” nature of the and who had remained loyal to the British during the 1857 Revolt. Ironically, the rehabilitation officials continued to borrow on these tropes to describe and compare Bengali and Punjabi refugees. While A. P. Jain described the refugees from West Pakistan as full of both “energy and determination,”103 Bhaskar Rao depicted them as symbols of “toughness…sturdy sense of self reliance and pride” which never let them

“submit to the indignity of living on doles and charity.”104 In contrast to the East Bengal refugees, “the displaced persons in the west revealed a praiseworthy mobility- they were ready to spread themselves out over the whole country, as it were.”105 Moreover, the most important thing that differentiated the refugees from the east and west and determined the failure and success of government efforts respectively towards their rehabilitation “was the character of the refugees themselves. In the western region they were tougher, more resilient of spirit and much more adaptable. It was easier for them to turn their hands on any job that came along.”106 At no point in this comparison did Rao mention that government assistance was skewed towards those migrating in the western zone. Similarly, H J Stooks, the Deputy Secretary to the Government of

India and attached with the Home Ministry, received an official assessment of the phenomena of return refugees from the Andaman and Nicobar islands. A K Ghosh, the Government’s man on the spot, reported that although each refugee family had been given more than five acres of paddy land, the refugees had only cultivated half the land. His reasons included a shortage of plough animals but also because the East Bengali refugee lacked the “pioneering spirit.” Ghosh claimed that,

103 A. P. Jain, The Statesman, 22 January 1951.

104 The Story of Rehabilitation, 38.

105 Ibid., 147.

106 Ibid.

256 They come from East Bengal, where the land is flat and soft, and possibly amongst the most fertile in the world; all the cultivator has to do is to scratch the soil, put in his seeds, and then sit back and wait for the harvest. Here they have had to break up virgin soil; and that is one of the reasons why less than half the land has been cultivated this year.107

Depictions of the “lazy” refugees from eastern Bengal were at times contrasted to those who became “productive citizens” through governmental efforts. As a corroboration of the government’s success in relief and rehabilitation, the East Bengali refugee could become hardworking and happy in his rehabilitated surroundings. When , founder of the

Council for the Promotion of Communal Harmony in 1964 and the Vice-President of the All-

India Women's Coordinating Council, visited Dandyakaranya in central India to assess the success of government’s rehabilitation efforts, one ‘settler’ reportedly noted that, “It is a

Ramrajya.108 No father can look after his son the way we are looked after by the

Government.”109 In this version, not only was the Bengali settler happy in Dandyakaranya but also regarded the Indian government in paternal terms. Similarly, in a speech in 1955 at a public meeting of representatives of 53 squatter colonies in the Dumdum area of Calcutta, Renuka Ray pointed out that “most of the refugees who have come at the outset before their numbers have become large, have proved an asset to the state for they struggled and cooperated with the government and are struggling valiantly to settle down. Many of them who are cultivators have helped to solve the food problem and products of other skillful artisans who have come from

East Bengal delight the eye and are finding markets.”110 Underscoring refugee cooperation with governmental rehabilitation efforts as the key formula for success and happiness to the refugees

107 Letter dated, 24 September 1949, File # 53/10/49- AN, M/O Home Affairs, GOI, 1949, NAI.

108 Dandyakaranya is a prominent region depicted in the well-known epic . According to mythology, tried to bring agriculture to the wild tracts of Dandyakaranya but did not succeed.

109 Maitraye Devi, Exodus (Calcutta: S Das, 1974), 12.

110 Renuka Ray Papers, File: 27, NMML.

257 seem deliberate given that she was speaking to representatives of squatter colonies who had earned their political spurs through agitation against the government’s rehabilitation efforts.

Sharanarthi111 Key? Refugees and the Discourse of Citizenship Rights

a) Response of the Refugees: Right to Relief and Rehabilitation

The official attempts to represent the Bengali refugees as victims of intangible persecution fears and later as economic migrants did not go unchallenged in the realms of public and non-official political discourse of the time. The category of a “refugee” in the post-Partition decade became central to the debates on entitlement and citizenship. The term “refugee” or its

Bengali variants of sharanarthi, bastuhara and udvaastu, evoked images of dependence, charity and rootlessness that the East Bengali Hindu migrants were quick to counter.

However, it was this very term “refugee” which became the catchphrase in the negotiations between the displaced and the government in later years. Although they may not have agreed with the connotations of charity and paternalism that came attached with the term, the East Bengali Hindu migrants appropriated such an identity to collectively represent their interests and negotiate for adequate relief and rehabilitation from the West Bengal and the Indian government. By 1949, a number of the refugee camps and colonies had their individual

Bastuhara Samities or Refugee Committees to represent their complaints and demands to the local camp superintendent and to the officials within the West Bengal government. In addition, a number of quasi-political organizations took up the cause of refugees’ rights in West Bengal.

The two main umbrella organizations in this context were the United Central Refugee Council

111 Person who seeks refugee from higher authorities.

258 (UCRC) and the Refugee Central Rehabilitation Council (RCRC) both formed in 1950.112 In later years, these organizations became essential components of political parties, the Communist

Party of India and the Revolutionary Socialist Party respectively, as articulation of refugee rights became integral to the left political movement in West Bengal in the late 1960s and 1970s.113

Although the refugee committees remained unstructured and fragmented in the initial years of their formation, their demands and petitions to the higher authorities had a similar foundation. In their campaigns the committees insisted that the Hindu minorities of East Bengal, once they had crossed the border to India, had the right to receive relief and rehabilitation that would lead to their successful incorporation as citizens of India. They stipulated that such rehabilitation should be undertaken within West Bengal.

By 1950 as the Government of India entered into high level talks with states such as

Assam and Orissa to rehabilitate Bengali refugees in those areas and began to consider the

Andamans as a possible location, a strong public campaign emerged against moving the refugees outside of West Bengal. Critics argued that “the government are making full use of this [sic] wandering refugees to strike political bargains with other provinces only to add to their distress by dragging them into none too pleasant controversies of provincialism.”114 Similarly, a Calcutta resident noted that if the Government’s plans to resettle refugees outside of the West Bengal was

112 The UCRC central council included members with affiliations with the CPI, Forward Bloc, the Socialist Unity Center of India, the Revolutionary , the Democratic Vanguard, the Bolshevik Party, the Socialist Republican Party, and the Hindu Mahasabha. The RCRC also consisted of card-carrying members of such left parties as the RSP, RCPI and the Socialist Party. At a meeting held at the Calcutta to protest against government apathy organized by the UCRC was attended by 50,000 refugees. For more details on these organizations and their activities with regard to refugee mobilization, Prafulla Chakrabarty, Marginal Men, 76-88.

113 Prafulla Chakrabarty has argued that the refugees provided the fodder or the stepping-stone for the left parties to come power in West Bengal from the late19 70s. Joya Chatterji has disputed such claims by arguing that the refugee movement in its quasi political form had began to demand rehabilitation rights much before the left politics managed to organize the refugees and their political demands. Joya Chatterji, “Right or Charity,” 83-85.

114 ‘Rehabilitation of East Bengal Refugees,’ letter dated September 3, 1949, Voice of New India, A Tale of Woes East Pakistan Minorities (Calcutta: D. R. Sen, 1966), 21.

259 executed, then “wherever they are resettled they will form a minority community and will undergo the same political social and economic disadvantages that the Bengali Hindus settled at present in Assam, Behar and Orissa have been subjected to.” He feared that in time “they will loose their culture, language and customs which are so real to the Bengali Hindus.”115

A large section of the Bengali intelligentsia argued that West Bengal had the resources of land and money to rehabilitate the refugees within the state. In 1950, the Bengal Rehabilitation

Organization presented a plan that claimed that if the rehabilitation process was “scientifically planned and implemented, [it] may give a new lease of life to the decadent, truncated state.”116 It suggested that mechanized and cooperating farming through large-scale land colonization would lead to successful rehabilitation. In contrast to the government’s depictions of the lazy refugee,

Radha Kamal Mukherjee, a well-known economist and sociologist and a prominent member of

Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, described the East Bengali farmers as people with “the sturdy spirit of individualism, courage and enterprise” that was needed for land colonization.

They were the pioneer settlers “who [had] fought the tiger and the crocodile, and who overcame the hazards of the forest and the flood that created in East Bengal the granary of rice and jute in

India.” 117 Mukherjee evoked the historical precedence of Bengali peasants who between the 12th and 18th centuries had moved eastwards into the Bengal delta and colonized jungles into farmlands.118 Similarly, Shyamaprasad Mukherji argued that the cultivators amongst the migrants “were an asset” and that the government would “do a great disservice to ourselves if we

115 HS, 16 November 1948, 4.

116 “Summary of Refugee Rehabilitation Plan,” Bengal Rehabilitation Organization in SPM Papers, File: 38, 4, NMML.

117 Ibid.

118 See Eaton, Rise of Islam where he outlines the different political, ecological and social reasons that facilitated such settlements and the helped to establish specific strains of Islam in the Bengal delta.

260 send them to Hyderabad and without exploiting the rich possibilities of the home state.”119

Although the UCRC and RCRC and many other smaller organizations expanded the cause of the refugees and in later decades interjected their demands within a leftist political agenda, a number of individuals, both refugees and residents of West Bengal, voiced their protest against the Indian government’s policies towards the East Bengali refugees. In an attempt to counter what they considered to be specious hairsplitting on the official definitions and distinctions between a political and economic migrant, their letters to political leaders and to the media provided different justifications towards recognizing the East Bengali Hindu migrant as a

“refugee” and entitled to relief and rehabilitation measures. Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, who was the president of the Bengal Rehabilitation Organization, asserted that it was “moral” duty of the

Indian government to ensure that those who crossed the border received adequate relief and rehabilitation. He cautioned that failure to provide such assistance might lead to

that inevitable destiny where the abject poverty illiteracy scorn and disdain from all around, and hunger and social disintegration and moral degeneration are sure to lead. The younger boys and girls will become specters of their former selves as they are tending to be; the boys - pickpockets pilferers and thieves and the girls will take to the life of shame and vice beyond redemption.120

D. R. Sen, under the pseudonym “Voice of India,” took the argument of moral duty one step further. He wrote a series of letters to Indian leaders and to newspaper editors that were published in a brochure entitled “What the Evacuees from East Pakistan Think.” In these letters,

Sen underscored the commonality of culture and religion between the Hindus of East and West

Bengal inspite of the Partition. If this connection alone was not enough for the West Bengal government to undertake proper rehabilitation of the refugees, then Sen pointed out that the

119 ‘The Problem of Refugees from East Bengal’, in SPM Papers, #34, Index 1 (1949-51), NMML.

120 Ibid.

261 Scheme for rehabilitating the evacuees can well be fitted in with the programmes for constructive works in the rural areas, to which the government is already committed…. The task of rehabilitation involves…rural constructive schemes, reclamation of wastelands, establishment of schools and hospitals, improvement of sanitation, development of agriculture, cottage industries etc.121

Incorporating such schemes with rehabilitation, Sen argued, would provide “fresh blood, will have a stimulating bearing on the constructive works in the decadent villages. The conditions recedent [sic] for resuscitating a village is that it must have a virile and sturdy population willing to work.”122 Sen’s depictions of the refugees comprising “virile and sturdy population willing to work” went counter to the stereotype of the Bengali refugee promoted by the government.

Instead of being a drain on the Indian economy, he argued that proper rehabilitation of the refugees would in fact infuse the system with much needed “fresh blood.” Similarly, in

September 1948, Jadunath Sarkar, urged the government and political leaders to “engraft this rich racial branch upon its old decaying trunk” for the sake of future prosperity.123

Official depictions of East Bengali refugee as a economic migrant was offset also by an editorial in the English daily, Amrita Bazar Patrika that noted, “We cannot bring ourselves to believe that these multitudes are frivolously leaving their hearths and homes in the prospect of finding ready made comforts and adequate means of living in an unaccustomed surroundings.

We believe that the government of India should accept their share of responsibility for settling emigrants in the best manner possible.”124 The manner in which government relief and rehabilitation measures were being doled was also under scrutiny. Some sections of the media condemned official action as “wooden and unimaginative approach to a great challenge.” An

121 A Tale of Woes, 2.

122 Ibid., 3.

123 Jadunath Sarkar, “Brothers from over the River,” MR, Vol. 84, September 1948, 236.

124 ABP, 14 March 1948, 4.

262 editorial in the Eastern Economist pointed out “There has been …a pitiful look [sic] of appreciation of the economic issues involved in what is called the ‘problem of West Bengal’.

Charity alone is not what the province needs; charity alone is all the province continues to obtain.”125

In the absence of large-scale violence, it was easy to suspect the motives of the refugees for crossing the border. The refugees themselves were aware of such suspicions and in their demands for relief and rehabilitation, consistently underlined their victimhood and the circumstances, which “forced” them from their homelands. They argued that they had not become refugees by choice but by circumstances beyond their control that were both physical and psychological threats to their continued residence in Eastern Pakistan. Such an argument helped to counter the negative stereotype of the refugees as economic parasites. In a reply to

Satish Chandra Dasgupta’s article mentioned earlier, A. T. Ganguli noted that the “East Bengal

Hindus are not leaving their ancestral hearths and homes for the mere fun of it. To say that panic is born of the fear of aggression alone is to over-simplify the matter.”126 Moreover, the refugees underscored the issue that it was the Partition, a decision taken by Indian leaders, which had rendered them, homeless. However, given the right amount of relief and rehabilitation, they too could become productive citizens of India. In fact, as sufferers of Partition and of violence, they pointed out that they were entitled to receive such humanitarian aid automatically.

b) Response of the Refugees: Demands for Citizenship

Even while the Indian state insisted that the refugees return to their homes across the border, the success of their rehabilitation policies depended on the incorporation and transformation of

125 “Piercing the Pact,” Eastern Economist, Vol. XV, no. 6 (New Delhi, August 11, 1950) in SPM Papers, File no, 39, Index vol. 1, NMML. Emphasis added.

126 ABP, 17 April 1948, 4.

263 the refugees into productive citizens. The refugees who had no intention of returning had a similar end in mind. However, in the absence of clear directives on how these migrants could become citizens of India, it became imperative for some of them to acquire a refugee identity that they hoped would provide them with necessary citizenship documentation in terms of rehabilitation. Becoming a “refugee” was a conditional stepping-stone to acquiring citizenship in

India. This is not to say that the East Bengali Hindu migrant preferred the appellative or the circumstances of camp colonies designated for refugees. Rather adoption of refugee status provided them with the political arsenal in their negotiations with both the government and the general public in West Bengal. Further, their continuing refugee status acted as an indictment of the government’s failure to rehabilitate them and transform them into citizens.

In addition to announcing the termination of refugee registration in July 1948, the government of West Bengal also took up the issue of conferring citizenship and franchise rights to those who sought such rights. In a press conference, B. C. Roy announced that anyone from

East Bengal or from Burma, Ceylon and Malaya could acquire citizenship of India if they had resided in the territory of India. For this purpose the applicant would be required to deposit to the office of a District Magistrate “a declaration in writing of his desire to acquire Indian domicile” or a letter from the enumerator connected with the preparation of the electoral roll which stated that the applicant “had been residing in the Indian union and desired to do so in the future.” The only restriction for acquiring such a legal status was that the applicant should not have obtained a foreign passport from any country including Pakistan before the date of commencement of the new Constitution of India. In addition, the legal right to vote was conditioned not only upon

264 acquiring citizenship, but by the applicant’s residence “in a place in the Indian Union for 180 days in the financial year ending March 31, 1948.” 127

Immediately after this announcement, several problems emerged. A Hindustan Standard editorial noted that many district magistrates had refused to entertain applications for citizenship and some had insisted on applications written on costly stamped papers. The editorial further claimed that there were no provisions to supply the applicant with any certificate proving his legal status as a citizen.128

Petitions and letters from refugees also underscored the implicit demand that they had been and were organically connected to India before the Partition and should again be incorporated as citizens of new India. They contained within them a discourse of historic sacrifices for cause of

India’s freedom that demanded inclusion within the Indian nation through the insistent claims of a shared political brotherhood. D. R. Sen argued that “These Hindus have made sacrifices galore in the cause of Indian Union, and one might say, they have been made the sacrificial goats in the great [sacrificial fire] of India’s freedom. If even now the government ask them to behave like good boys by staying at home, they might as well ask them to embrace Islam.”129

Radhagovinda Nath, in referring to the problems of evacuees migrating from eastern Bengal, noted “unless the government came to their rescue and secured lands for them their settlement would not be possible. It would be the duty of Government to see that those members of the minority community who had already migrated from east Bengal or would be migrating in the future were not deprived of the Indian union citizenship.” Nath claimed that the refugees had

127 HS, 28 July 1948, 4.

128 Ibid.

129 Tale of Woes, 15.

265 been victims of political choices beyond their control. “It was due to the division of India and

Bengal that they had been placed in such a position. At the time when the agitation for the partition of Bengal was being carried on leaders of the country assured members of the minority community of east Bengal that they would receive all sorts of help from the Indian union. That assurance has got to be implemented now.130 Similarly, another letter entitled “Waifs of East

Pakistan” pointed out that the “minorities of East Bengal have a right to demand a place in India if that is possible without doing any violence to the secular conception of the state.” Such petitions usually underlined the utter incomprehensibility of the Partition and its consequent victimization of the Hindu minorities. Thus the letter described the writer’s situation in East

Pakistan in the following terms, “we are left stranded leaderless and rudderless – a group of human relics who can neither appreciate the strange forces let loose by the partition nor find it easy to make terms with the new socio political set up that has come into being.”131

In addition, some of these petitions also underlined the fact that they were “victims” of failed promises on the part of the Indian government who had earlier agreed to take care of the minorities in Pakistan. The refugees contended that the Indian government in the post-Partition period had only paid lip service to such promises and had been unable to protect their rights in their home country. As a result they had been “forced” to migrate, and thus were entitled to become automatic citizens within their “imagined” nation. For example, one refugee argued that

They [the government] seem to have formed a habit of speaking about the refugees in a patronizing way lacking real sympathy, forgetting that the East Bengal Hindus have as much right as their compeers in West Bengal to consider this part of Bengal as their home. Whether one likes it or not…the West Bengal government can hardly escape their responsibility in the matter of absorbing them as citizens of West Bengal.132

130 ABP, 4 July 1948, 3. Emphasis added.

131 ABP, 12 March 1948, 4. Emphasis added.

132 ABP, 21 July 1948, 4.

266

In the absence of specific instructions on the procedures to acquire Indian citizenship, such arguments of historic sacrifices and “genuine” victimhood were, at best, discursively successful in establishing a claim to the Indian nation. A sure way to ensure citizenship remained, in these early years, to get one’s name on the electoral lists for the upcoming general elections of 1952.

Prominent leaders in West Bengal such as Shyamaprasad Mukherjee, argued that the East

Bengali migrants, by virtue of a Partition covenant between the Indian leaders and the Hindu minorities that had guaranteed their well-being in India, now had the “moral right” to claim citizenship in India.133

According to the enumeration handbook for the Census of 1951 (West Bengal and ), the Determination of Indian Nationality specified that a person who migrated from Pakistan to

India on or after 19th July 1948 but before the 25th July 1949 will be a citizen if he applied for and obtained registration as a citizen and possesses a citizenship certificate (registration as a citizen is different from registration as refugees). But, “no person who migrates from Pakistan to

India on or after the 25th of July 1949 can be an Indian citizen.”134 Consequently, over 31 lakhs of East Bengali migrants who had migrated after 25 July 1949, the deadline for refugee registration, signed a petition demanding inclusion within the electoral rolls. Drawn from refugee colonies all over West Bengal, the signatories claimed on behalf of 50 lakh refugees in

West Bengal, the right to citizenship and franchise.135

133 Letter to B. C. Roy, dated 22 August 1950, SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File no, 39, Index vol. 1, NMML.

134 Ibid.

135 SPM Papers, Refugees and Minorities, 1950-1951, File no, 39, Index vol. 1, NMML.

267 Conclusion

The relief and rehabilitation efforts of the Government of India operated on a specific paradigm of violence as represented in cataclysmic riots in Punjab. Such a framework allowed the government to argue that the East Bengal refugees had crossed the border to reap economic benefits. In portraying the East Bengali refugee as illegitimate, lazy and parochial, the Indian state shifted the blame for a failed rehabilitation onto the shoulders of the refugees who by their sheer numbers, illegitimate claims and their refusal to be resettled in the Andamans and

Dandyakaranya had ensured the failure of the state initiatives. At the same time, it continued to provide rehabilitation measures, however inadequate, to the refugees beyond 1964 to maintain its self-portrayal of a paternalistic and humanitarian state.

The government’s inadequate measures towards rehabilitating the refugees did not go uncontested as refugees themselves organized themselves over time to petition jointly for their rights to resettlement and citizenship. In their demands they emphasized their victimization due to partition violence and their past sacrifices in the cause of India’s freedom to now claim automatic political citizenship in India. Although they adopted a refugee identity, they expected such a measure to be a temporary yet necessary one for their incorporation within the Indian citizenry.

268 Chapter 7

Conclusion

It has become almost a truism to identify August 1947 as both the end of colonial rule and the beginning of independent nation-states of India and Pakistan. However, both Partition studies and research on South Asian nationalisms remain unclear on the processes that produced the “nation” within these nation-states. This ambiguity, in turn has produced two crucial but problematic assumptions, that national citizenship was automatic upon residence and that contemporary reflexive nationalisms among India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were engendered at

Partition, the moment of origin, at Partition. The main conclusions that emerge from the foregoing analysis counter such assumptions and complicate and historicize the project of nation building. The aftermath of the Partition in the Bengal region with its low scale, intermittent violence, chronic migration and contested border provides a unique template to examine the both the establishment of the post-Partition national orders in India and Pakistan and the myriad ways in their citizens contested and subverted such projects.

To understand and historically contextualize the efforts of India and Pakistan in the 1950s and 1960s to reconstruct the sociological, demographic and cultural map within the partitioned provinces, I have adopted a cross border perspective and evaluated the Bengal region as a whole.

Although constitutionally regarded as parts of two separate and distinct nation states, geopolitics in West Bengal and East Pakistan remained intricately entwined decades after the actual

Partition. Both states, in the initial years, sought to legitimize and symbolically reproduce democratic nationalist orders. Often these processes involved conflicting attempts to homogenize national identities in religious terms. My dissertation argues that such homogenization continued to be contested in the post Partition period, as identities based on region, language and culture

269 jockeyed into primacy at different points of time. Minorities, Hindus in Pakistan and Muslims in

India, thus became intricately linked with the evolution of national identity, self-definition and honor of each State. As India and Pakistan sought to control the cross-border population movement in the eastern sector and identify who would and could be their citizens, minorities in each state became key groups whose loyalties to their respective nations remained contested.

The central themes of violence, territoriality and national citizenship, in this dissertation have attempted to grapple with the following questions. Where do the histories of Partition end and the histories of new nation states of India and Pakistan begin? Can such a project, which genealogically remains embedded within the event of Partition, attempt to objectively distance itself from enquiries into nation building? More importantly, can such interrogations that necessarily require analysis of official documents generated at the center of the nation also incorporate unofficial negotiations on identity and citizenship that occurred at the periphery of the nation?

In addressing these issues, this dissertation has moved away from the inevitability of the political division and the attendant cognitive partitioning of identities along communal lines and argues that contingent factors influenced both. Along with political mobilization and fracturing of cognitive nationalisms along religious lines, the voices of many Bengalis, both Hindus and

Muslims, who argued against the Partition of the province in 1947. Continuation of cultural, social and economic ties informed these arguments and helped to articulate the nation in territorial terms. Although the Partition added empirical weigh to a sociological map of the region that made religious affiliation a pre-eminent form for both community and cartography, after 1947, both sides of Bengal began as parts of India and Pakistan with sizeable minority citizens who defied such implicit dictates. In these cases, locational ties prevailed over nation,

270 religion and community. Even for those who sought security across the new border, such moves were deemed temporary rather than ones of permanent uprooting. Many hoped to return home once what they perceived as a political impasse was resolved.

The climate of uncertainty and impermanence was heightened by changing and differing policies of the Indian and Pakistani states with regard to their western and eastern border.

Moreover, both states guaranteed citizenship rights to their respective minorities on paper but were often unable to ensure such rights in practice. Questions of loyalty to the nation became imbricated within the project of nation building as each state sought to control the movement and fix residency of their citizens. In the eyes of each state, the act of crossing the border became tantamount to choice, an implicit renunciation of one’s citizenship of one country in favor of the other.

The project of nationalizing the nation involved both demarcating and controlling territory and people. The Radcliffe Line was not only the signifier of the Partition but became central to re-territorrialization efforts of the new states. The borderland in divided Bengal became a zone of dispute in terms of its actual delineations. It disrupted traditional activities of those living in the region. Almost overnight the border became an economic frontier and officials of both states became arbitrators who had the authority to demarcate the customary from the criminal. In addition the border evolved as a site where competing Indo-Pak nationalisms played out through demands of loyalty of the border citizens and border-dwellers. This dissertation has argued that there was no foreordained plan to control the mutual border. Official policy on the border evolved in conjunction with political and economic needs of both states. The persistent movement of people back and forth across the border contested the delimitation aims of each nation state. The introduction of the Passport and Visa Scheme was thus an attempt to control

271 such movements and to differentiate between “infiltrators” and legitimate migrants. It was at the border the national identities were externalized within the spatial dialogue between the center and the margin. The periphery was central to the establishment of the new national orders.

Minorities in each state, Hindus in East Pakistan and Muslims in India, became central to the project of national citizenship as both India and Pakistan continue to employ Partition idioms to denominate their citizens. One the one hand, minorities guaranteed the legitimacy of each state and acted as tacit “hostages” whose safety and security guaranteed the same for those on the other side of the border. On the other hand, officials in each state put their respective minority citizens under the microscope to determine their perceived loyalty to the nation. In the volatile post-Partition period in which India and Pakistan adopted a belligerent posture towards each other and went to war in 1948 and 1965, the citizenship of Hindu and Muslim minorities became invested with religious connotations and they became the usual suspects for any perceived anti- state activity. The implication of being hostages was not lost on the minorities as some of them found it easier to cross the border than to face the continuous litmus test of loyalty. Such migration was usually temporary, imbued with the prospect of return.

However, in the case of East Pakistan the needs of nation building became interlinked with migration of minorities and the rhetoric of perceived persecution. As they crossed the border to India, the East Pakistani Hindu citizens became “evacuees” in their home state, while they became classified as “refugees” in India. The changes in state policy and the changing dynamics of inter-dominion relations between India and Pakistan ensured that the possessions they had left behind changed from being ‘evacuee’ property in 1947 become “enemy” property by 1965.

272 For India, these “evacuees” from East Pakistan tested both the limits of the fragile economy and the projected secular claims of the new state. Already inundated by Hindu refugees and returning Muslim citizens on its western border, the Indian state attempted to regulate this movement of people. In its eastern border, it denied any incidents of violence to justify the migration of refugees from East Pakistan. This dissertation has argued that difference in the

Indian state’s rehabilitation policies and attendant disbursement of resources between its western and eastern borders operated within a specific paradigm of large-scale violence that rendered the

East Pakistani refugees as illegitimate migrants. However, the continued and chronic migration of these refugees was crucial to the construction of the Indian state’s self image as a paternalistic and humanitarian nation. Consequently, Indian authorities attempted to place any failure and limitations of the rehabilitation process in the east on the shoulders of the refugees themselves by depicting them as lazy, parochial and effeminate. However, as this dissertation illustrates, violence, especially against Hindu women and participation in the anti-colonial struggle provided the epistemological framework for the East Bengali Hindu minorities to justify their demand for full rehabilitation and Indian citizenship.

Scholarship on rehabilitation in West Bengal has emphasized the role of different individuals and civil and political groups in protesting against the failure of the Indian state to rehabilitate the refugees on the same footing as their western counterparts. This dissertation has urged for a re-centering of the rehabilitation process and placing it within the project of establishing a post-Partition national order. Minorities in one state became “evacuees” and later

“refugees” in another state. The processes initiated by both India and Pakistan to control territory and identify their population also generated a unique form of trans-territorial identity for their respective minorities. Such trans-territoriality contributed to the homogenizing trends and

273 contested the limits of each nation as Indian and Pakistani authorities remained and continue to remain concerned about minorities across their borders.

This dissertation has traced part of the historical trajectory of the post-Partition period and argued that the contemporary reflexive nationalisms of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh were not entirely immanent within Partition. Such developments depended on perceived self- definition of each state, within delineations of territorial jurisdiction and the complex demands of national citizenship. Although partitioned, the new nation-states remained organically linked through the movement of their citizens between 1947 and 1965. Any analysis of this period and the partitioned regions has to move away from the assumptions of a “partitioned” history and incorporate regionally specific processes on both sides of the border. The influences of the tebhaga movement of 1945-47, the connections between the linguistic reorganization of states in

India in the 1950s and the contemporaneous language movement in East Pakistan remain under- analyzed in the context of Partition studies.

This dissertation challenges the notion that the histories of Partition end in 1947 and are separate from the narrative of Independence and post-1947 projects of nation building. More importantly, it complicates the accepted and normative discourses of state identity formation in

South Asia and the uncritical understanding of “secular” India and “Islamic” Pakistan and in the process, contributes to the still fledgling historiography of post-independent South Asia.

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296