Senior Bharatiya Janata Party leader and history buff Tathagata Roy (the current Governor of Tripura) provides elaborate details about Suhrawardy’s mishandling of the Bengal famine of 1943 when he became the minister of food and civil supplies in Bengal. Roy, in his blog titled ‘My People, Uprooted: The Saga of Hindus of Eastern Bengal’, writes extensively about Suhrawardy’s shameful role, his inaction and negligence and his corrupt deals that exacerbated the sufferings of the people during the famine. Roy also quotes Hindu Mahasabha leader and freedom movement stalwart Syama Prasad Mookerjee, who had exposed Suhrawardy’s ineptitude and corruption during the 1943 famine.

The Pogrom Against Hindus

Back to 16 August 1946, sporadic trouble started breaking out in many areas of Calcutta from 10 am. Suhrawardy had got governor Frederick Burrows, an evil man who was complicit in the communal clashes that followed, to declare the day a public holiday. Congress opposed this and its leaders like Kiran Shankar Roy urged Hindus to keep their shops and establishments open. Muslim mobs started forcing the Hindus to close their shops in a bid to enforce their hartal and this triggered sporadic clashes.

By early afternoon, Muslims armed with iron rods, sticks, swords and weapons started streaming out of the mosques in areas like Park Circus, Metiabruz, Rabindra Sarani and Garden Reach and congregating at the Ochterlony monument (the Shahid Minar now) for the Muslim League rally. The gathering, estimated variously between 60,000 and 200,000, was by far the largest assembly of Muslims in Bengal.

Muslim League leader Khwaja Nizamuddin (who later became governor general of Pakistan after Jinnah’s death) was one of the first to address the rally. He laid the ground by alleging that Hindus had attacked Muslims that morning and the Muslims had only retaliated in self-defence. Suhrawardy delivered a fiery speech calling for the creation of Pakistan and urging Muslims to fight for it. He gave the slogans: “Maar ke lenge Pakistan, lad ke lenge Pakistan, le kar rahenge Pakistan, Allahu Akhbar, nara-i-takhbir”. (We will kill and fight to create Pakistan, we are determined to create Pakistan.)

Suhrawardy, according to reports filed by British intelligence operatives after the 16 August rally, told the large and agitated crowd that he had ensured the police and army would not intervene. That was seen as an open call and encouragement to the goons to attack Hindus. Even Banglapedia, the ‘National Encyclopedia of Bangladesh’ (where Suhrawardy is a revered figure), writes that Suhrawardy had told the gathering that the police and the army had been “restrained”. That meant they would not look the other way and would not interfere when Muslim mobs attacked and killed and raped Hindus.

And that is exactly what happened. Enraged and emboldened Muslims streamed out of the rally and started attacking Hindu homes and properties. Hundreds of Hindus in Hindu-majority areas like College Street, Kalabagan, Harrison Road, Colootolla and Barabazar were massacred. Suhrawardy, along with his associates, went to the Calcutta Police headquarters at Lalbazar and restrained the police from venturing into areas where Muslims were attacking Hindus. He ensured that the police were deployed only in areas where Hindus were putting up a resistance and fighting back. The British and Anglo-Indian police officers were only too happy to oblige Suhrawardy.

The Pogrom was Pre-Planned

That Suhrawardy had planned a long time ago was evident from the fact that he started making demographic changes in the Calcutta Police constabulary. Tathagata Roy writes:

“The constables of the Calcutta Police were, as a rule, recruited according to what was known as the A.B.C.D. rule – which meant that they were drawn all from the districts of Arrah, Balia, Chhapra and Deoria. These are districts around the boundary of the United Provinces and Bihar, in the area generally known as Bhojpur. People from this area are well-built, tough and loyal – almost ideal police constable material. There was just one problem that Suhrawardy had with them. They were all devout Hindus, and moreover, worshippers of Lord Hanuman, the Hindu God who personifies strength, manliness and undying loyalty to his master, Lord Rama. They, therefore, could not be trusted to carry out the designs that Suhrawardy had in mind.

“In order to get round this problem Suhrawardy turned to Niaz Mohammed Khan, the ICS officer who, while District Magistrate of Midnapore, had carried out (Bengal Governor) Herbert’s nefarious designs of crackdown on the participants in the Quit India movement. The idea was to Muslimise the Calcutta Police. Why the Calcutta Police in particular? Because Calcutta had already been chosen by the Muslim League as the theatre of the bloodbath that had been scheduled on 16th August 1946, in what they would call ‘Direct Action’, and what the rest of the world would eventually call the Great Calcutta Killings.

“Niaz Mohammed Khan, under Suhrawardy’s orders journeyed to the Northwest to recruit Punjabi Muslim and Pathan constables for the Calcutta Police. Pathans are Pashto-speaking Muslim tribesmen inhabiting the barren hills of the frontier, and are divided into a large number of tribes such as Afridi, Mohmand, Waziri, Khattak, Yusufzai etc. Blood feuds among them between different tribes or different groups (called khel) in the same tribe are still very common. These tribes are by nature extremely fierce and cruel – in fact they had been extensively used in British jails in India for application of third-degree methods. Under the benign leadership of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his Khudai Khidmatgar (Servants of God) party a considerable number of them had become mellowed and come closer to the Indian mainstream, but this had made little difference to the people away from towns like Peshawar and Kohat. There was another feature that should be mentioned. Because their womenfolk were all kept in strict purdah – the Pathans are first cousins of the present-day Afghan Taliban – these rural Pathans had no respect for women, nor were they accustomed to seeing women out in the open. This had some extremely unsavoury consequences.”

That the pogrom against Hindus was pre-planned is also proven by accounts of British police and intelligence officers who reported that special coupons for gallons of petrol were issued in the names of Muslim League ministers, and this petrol was used to make petrol bombs by Muslim League goons. One month’s food ration was withdrawn and stocked to feed 10,000 Muslim League musclemen and goons. These accounts have been documented in articles like these.

Bangladeshi historian Harun-or-Rashid, in his book The Foreshadowing of Bangladesh: Bengal Muslim League & Muslim Politics: 1906-1947, also alludes to the diabolic role of Suhrawardy in engineering riots against the Hindus in a pre-planned manner and shielding the Muslim marauders from the police.

The worst affected part of Calcutta – where thousands died, many times that number maimed, and thousands of women raped and butchered – was “bound by Bowbazar Street on South, Upper Circular Road (now known as Acharya Prafulla Chandra Road) on the east, Vivekananda Road on the north and Strand Road on the west”. After six days of mayhem, Bengal was put under Viceroy’s rule on 21 August, five battalions of British troops supported by four battalions of Indian and Gurkha troops were deployed in Calcutta. Rioting and violence ultimately stopped on 22 August.

The Calcutta killings triggered violence in Bihar, the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh), Punjab and the North West Frontier Province (NWFP). The worst riots, however, were reported from Noakhali. The mastermind behind the infamous Noakhali riots was Muslim League leader Gholam Sarwar Husseini, a close associate of Suhrawardy. There are many letters (which exist in National Archives in India and the UK) written by Suhrawardy to Husseini, urging the latter to initiate ‘direct action’ against Hindus in Noakhali.

The Noakhali Riots

An estimated 5,000 Hindus were killed, many times that number injured, about 4,000 Hindu women raped and thousands of families forcibly converted to Islam during the two months of October and November of 1946, in Noakhali. The Hindu population of Noakhali declined dramatically as a result of the riots. The unimaginable torture meted out to Hindus is well documented here. Suhrawardy is reported to have told his aides in Calcutta that Husseini should have been in the city (Calcutta) to ensure the success of the pogrom against the Hindus of the city. Suhrawardy’s close associates also massacred hundreds of Hindus in Dhaka, seized properties of Hindus, raped Hindu women and forcibly converted an estimated 1,300 Hindu families of Dhaka to Islam.