For quite some time I have been getting requests to write a detailed account on Gopal Mukherjee (Gopal Pantha), in the context of the Direct Action Day, where his resistance against the Muslim League not only saved many Hindu lives but also stopped Jinnah and the Muslim League from getting their desired results. While researching on the internet it was pretty disheartening to find that not much has been documented about the man who had once singlehandedly saved the Hindus in Kolkata during Direct Action Day. Only in India and perhaps only among the Hindus (a large section of which has been systematically brainwashed by the Marxists to hate their own religion) it is possible to find such apathy, almost bordering on irreverence, towards their own savior heroes.

Gopal Patha (Mukherjee) making the idol of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. Patha always addressed himself as an admirer & ardent supporter of Bose. Image courtesy Anuj Dhar/Twitter

The bloodied history of Indias Partition will remain incomplete without a mention of the Direct Action Day or the Great Calcutta Killings of 1946, when Calcutta was in the grip of fanatic Muslim mobs that ran riot killing and raping Hindu men and women. In retaliation a group was formed by the Hindus led by Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay that effectively managed to save Calcutta from falling to the well-chalked out plans of the Muslim League to separate the whole of Bengal from India; a plan that was indirectly backed by the British colonial government.

What led to the Direct Action Day

Uncontrolled and brutal communal violence in Calcutta, Noakhali, and parts of Bihar forced the Congress leaders to accept the partition of India based on religious lines. Prior to the partition, the British colonial government with their divide and rule policy helped in the formation of the Muslim League, and soon inevitably it led to the establishment of the Two Nation theory by the Muslim League. By the 1930s the Muslims in Bengal had already accepted the Two Nation theory as their political doctrine, and were ready for a division of Bengal based on religious lines. The Muslims in Bengal believed in the Muslim League propaganda which said by virtue of ones religious belief, a Punjabee or an Uttar Pradesh Muslim is closer to him than his next door neighbor who belonged to some other religion (Hinduism) (Barkat, et al., Deprivation of Hindu minority in Bangladesh: Living with vested property, 2008, p. 45).

The Muslim Leagues demand and stubbornness for a separate nation for the Muslims not only fractured India in 1947, but also caused a huge bloodshed in 1946 undivided Bengal and Bihar with the start of the Direct Action Day riots. The seeds of the Direct Action Day communal riots were sowed when the Cabinet Mission in India (1946) that was formed to arrange transfer of power from British authority to Indian leadership proposed a plan for the formation of the new Dominion of India, which failed to address the Muslim Leagues proposal to divide the country into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan. To protest against this proposal exclusion, the Muslim League decided to call for a hartal (general strike) on 16 August 1946, and named it as the Direct Action Day, wherein the League decided to show its muscle power and assert its demand for a separate nation for the Muslims.

A Muslim League Council Meeting was held from 2729 July 1946 where a resolution was passed stating that the Direct Action Day aimed at unfolding a direct action to force the creation of a Muslim majority Pakistan. Jinnah was clear enough in his indications of his intentions when he boldly stated he will have India divided or India burned, and the Muslim League had said goodbye to Constitutional methods and was ready to create trouble. Adding further fuel to the already charged up Muslim communal sentiments were the pamphlet writings by the then Mayor of Calcutta, Syed Mohammed Usman, that declared, We Muslims have had the crown and have ruled. Do not lose hearts, be ready and take swords. Oh kafir! Your doom is not far (ref: Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: the making of India and Pakistan, 2017, p 64). This was supported by Husseyn Shahid Suhrawardy, the then Bengal chief minister, who in his speech indirectly promised no actions were to be taken against the armed Muslims should they decide to unleash their activities in the city (Yasmin Khan, ibid, p 65). Jinnah specifically used the religious and communal symbols and idioms to charge up the Muslim community into starting violence for a forced carving out of a separate nation as a Muslim homeland. There are also claims that the Bengal Chief Minister Suhrawardy during the communal violence of 16th August forcibly removed Hindu policemen from their jobs (Yasmin Khan, ibid, p 184-185).

DN Panigrahi, the author ofIndias Partition: The Story of Imperialism in Retreat, also confirmed the inaction of police and army on those ghastly days, after speaking to a foreign journalist present in Calcutta on that day, when unabated killings and rapes were carried on by Muslim mobs for 48 hours. It is said that the army was brought in only after it was felt that the Europeans might be attacked, showing the collusion between the League and the British colonial government. It was this Direct Action Day or the Great Calcutta Killings on 16th August 1946 that finally marked a psychological break between secular Hindus and the communal demand by the Muslims for a separate Islamic state named as Pakistan.

As per Nishad Hajari, author on the Partition, no one knows the death toll in what would become known as the Great Calcutta Killings. Many bodies were washed down the Hooghly or consumed in fires. The generally accepted estimate is five thousand Calcuttans were killed, while another ten to fifteen thousand had their bones broken, limbs hacked off, or bodies charred (Midnight Furies: The Deadly Legacy of Indian Partition, 2015, p. 33). The entire objective of the Direct Action Day was to flex the muscle power of the Muslim League, and to show that Hindus and Muslims were incompatible.

Gopal Mukherjee

The killing of Hindus started with the murder of two Bihari milkmen in Beliaghata on Friday 16th August early morning, and soon Hindu owned movie theatres, hotels, and shops were attacked and set on fire by Muslim mobs. Motivated by Suhrawardys assurances in the Leagues Rally, violent Muslim mobs led by criminals like Munna Chaudhary and Meena Punjabi started widespread attacks on Hindu homes and shops. There were reports of rampant killings of Hindu men and boys while Hindu girls were kidnapped and raped or kept as sex slaves. As per the reports by a police officer, Golok Bihari Majumder, bodies of naked and hacked Hindu girls were seen hanging from a slaughterhouse in central Calcutta.

As the murders and rapes continued, on 18th August Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay (or GopalPatha) decided to stand up against this State sponsored Muslim violence on Hindus. He belonged to a family of freedom fighters and was the nephew of the revolutionary, Anukulchandra Mukhopadhyay. Gopal Mukhopadhyay was joined by Jugal Chandra Ghosh, Basanta (a wrestler), and Vijay Singh Nahar, and together they formed the Bharat Jatiya Bahini, an organization that armed Hindus with weapons like with pistols (sourced from American soldiers), lathis, spears, knives, swords, and also acid bombs. Hundreds of Hindus (Bengalis, Sikhs, Odiyas, Biharis, and UP-ites) from the various Vyayam Samitis of Calcutta and its adjoining areas, along with Arya Samajis and members of the Hindu Mahasabha came forward to take part in the resistance.

As the Hindu resistance gained ground, the numbers of Muslim casualties rose, and soon the latter panicked and started leaving the city, even though the clashes continued for nearly a week. From 18th to 20th August Gopal Patha and the other Hindu leaders specifically identified and killed the Muslims who had taken part in rapes and killings of the Hindus. Members of the Muslim National Guard, a militant body associated with the Muslim League, were killed in large numbers; however no Muslim women or children were touched by the Hindus during the resistance. By 20th August Suhrawardy realized he couldnt displace the Hindus from Calcutta, and his dreams of making the entire Bengal along with Calcutta a part of Pakistan would not be fulfilled.

In order to save himself and his government, Suhrawardy along with G G Ajmiri and Sheikh Mujibur Rehman (the founder of Bangladesh and a member of the Muslim League), appealed to Gopal Mukherjee to end the killings. Gopal Mukherjee agreed on the condition that the Muslim League would first make its members lay down their weapons and promise to stop all killings of Hindus. Finally, on 21 August, Bengal came under direct Viceroys rule and the army was deployed in the city. To save his chair Suhrawardy had agreed to all of Gopal Mukherjees conditions; however on 21 August 1946, once the army was deployed, the British Viceroy, Lord Archibald Wavell dismissed Suhrawardy and his Muslim League government. Later Gopal Mukherjee also refused to surrender arms to Gandhiji, when the latter came and asked Hindus to surrender their weapons, few months after the riots. Gopal Mukherjee bluntly said he will not surrender his weapons to Gandhiji who was nowhere in sight when Hindus were being killed and raped during the Great Calcutta Killings.

Gopal Mukherjee

Gopal Mukherjee

It goes beyond saying that if Gopal Mukherjee had not spearheaded the Hindu Resistance from 18 August 1946 onwards against the State sponsored Muslim mob violence, the entire area now known as West Bengal would have become a part of Pakistan in 1947, and Calcutta would have been a city in the newly formed Islamic majority state of Pakistan, which was the desired objective of Jinnah and the Muslim league in their Direct Action Day plan.

(Note: There are interviews of Gopal Mukherjee and discussions on him on few Youtube channels. Do take some time out and check these videos. You just need to type Gopal Mukherjee or Gopal Pantha. While listening to these, please keep in mind the horrific situation at that time created by the Muslim League and the violent Muslim mobs, and understand why he was forced to create the Hindu Resistance, without which the Hindus in Bengal would have had no future).

Some personal details on Gopal Mukherjee as I found on the internet:

Gopal Mukherjee was born on 13th May 1913 in Malanga Lane of Bowbazar, Kolkata. His family was originally from the Chuadanga district of East Bengal (now Bangladesh), and had moved to Kolkata in the 1890s, where they owned a meat shop. Gopal Mukherjee died in Kolkata in 2005.

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Read more from the original source:

Gopal Mukherjee: The man who led Hindu resistance and saved Calcutta from falling into Pakistani hands - Firstpost