The Noakhali riots, were a series of massacres, rapes, abductions and forced conversions of Hindus into Muslim and looting and arson of Hindu properties, perpetrated by the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of Bengal in October–November 1946, a year before India's independence from British rule. It affected the areas under the Ramganj, Begumganj, Raipur, Lakshmipur, Chhagalnaiya and Sandwip police stations in Noakhali district and the areas under the Hajiganj, Faridganj, Chandpur, Laksham and Chauddagram police stations in Tipperah district, a total area of more than 2,000 square miles.[citation needed]
The massacre of the Hindu population started on 10 October, on the day of Kojagari Lakshmi Puja, and continued unabated for about a week. It is estimated that a minimum of more than 5,000 Hindus were killed,[1][2] hundreds of Hindu women were raped and thousands of Hindu men and women were forcibly converted to Islam.[3] Around 50,000 to 75,000 survivors were sheltered in temporary relief camps in Comilla, Chandpur, Agartala and other places.[4] Around 50,000 Hindus remained marooned in the affected areas under the strict surveillance of the Muslims, where the administration had no say.[4] In some areas, Hindus had to obtain permits from the Muslim leaders in order to travel outside their villages. The forcibly converted Hindus were coerced to give written declarations that they had converted to Islam of their own free will. Sometimes they were confined in others' houses and only allowed to be in their own house when an official party came for inspection. According to Dinesh Chandra, Hindus were forced to pay subscriptions to the Muslim League and jiziyah, the protection tax paid by dhimmis in an Islamic state.[5]
Haran Chandra Ghosh Choudhuri, the only Hindu representative to the Bengal Legislative Assembly from the district of Noakhali, described the incidents as "the organized fury of the Muslim mob".[6] Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta and the former Finance Minister of Bengal, dismissed the argument that the Noakhali incidents were ordinary communal riots. He described the events as a planned and concerted attack by the majority community on the minority community.[4]
Mohandas Gandhi camped in Noakhali for four months and toured the district in a mission to restore peace and communal harmony. However, the peace mission failed to restore confidence among the survivors, who could not be permanently rehabilitated in their villages. In the meantime, the Congress Party leadership accepted the Partition of India and the peace mission and other relief camps were abandoned. The majority of the survivors migrated to West Bengal, Tripura[7]and Assam.[8]
Some people says that Noakhali did not witness any violence during the Great Calcutta Killings. Though it was quiet, the tension was building up. During the six weeks leading up to the disturbances in Noakhali, Eastern Command headquarters in Kolkata received reports indicating tension in the rural areas of Noakhali and Chittagong districts.[9] Village poets and balladeers composed anti-Hindu poems and rhymes, which they recited and sang in market places and other public gathering places.[10]
Direct Action Day (16 August 1946), also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of widespread riot and manslaughter between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India.[1] The day also marked the start of what is known as The Week of the Long Knives.[2][3]
The 'Direct Action' was announced by the Muslim League Council to show the strength of Muslim feelings both to British and Congress because Muslims feared that if the British just pulled out, Muslims would surely suffer at the hands of overwhelming Hindu majority, which resulted in the worst communal riots that British India had seen.
The Muslim League and the Indian National Congress were the two largest political parties in the Constituent Assembly of India in the 1940s. The 1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed an initial plan of composition of the new Dominion of India and its government. However, soon an alternative plan to divide the British Raj into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan was proposed by the Muslim League. The Congress rejected the alternative proposal outright. The Muslim League planned a general strike (hartal)[4] on 16 August, terming it as Direct Action Day, to protest this rejection and assert its demand for a separate Muslim homeland.[5][6]
In those days the situation in Bengal was particularly complex. In the province, Muslims represented the majority of the population (56%, as against 42% of Hindus) and were mostly concentrated in the eastern part.[7] As a result of this demographic structure and specific developments, this province was the only one in which a Muslim League government was in power under the provincial autonomy scheme introduced in 1935 in coalition with the Europeans, and against the hurdle of strong opposition from the Congress, the Communist Party of India and also from a Hindu nationalist party, the Hindu Mahasabha. The latter was supported by many members of the rich Marwari trading community, composed of immigrants from Rajasthan, who largely dominated the economy of central Calcutta (although European capital was still important).[8] In consequence, the inhabitants of Calcutta, 64% Hindus and 33% Muslims, were by then divided into two highly antagonistic entities.[7]Against this backdrop, the protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta.[9][10] More than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours.[1][10] This violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province. These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.
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