The story of our past is as important as our present for it determines our future. Historical atrocities when scrutinised with hindsight prove to be great teachers; they remind our fickle, distracted minds of evils that occurred and warn us of similar dangers lurking in the shadows ready to strike us in our moment of weakness. The Bengal Files, despite its supposed deficiencies and controversies, does great justice to our society by bringing to the fore an unfortunate but edifying chapter of our past-Direct Action Day 1946.

Direct Action Day, which began on August 16, 1946, along with the pogrom at Noakhali, stands out as a gruesome, barbaric and diabolic act of unprecedented depravity even by the standards of pre-Partition violence. Direct Action Day was not a spontaneous violent confrontation between two communities or in other words, a simple communal riot. It was the culmination of a deep-set ideological hatred for the Hindu that found expression in a strategically planned and brutally executed exercise of violence that had administrative sanction. When it was all over, more than 4,000 people had been slaughtered to death in Calcutta.

It is important to recall the events leading up to that fateful day in August 1946. In February of that year, the British, sensing the increasing frustration and anger among Indians, dispatched a high-powered Cabinet Mission consisting of Lord Pethic-Lawrence (Secretary of State for India), Sir Stafford Cripps (President of the Board of Trade), and AV Alexander (First Lord of the Admiralty) to temper the unrest. The specific purpose of the mission was to discuss the transfer of power from Britain to Indians without compromising India’s unity. However, the Cabinet Mission failed to bridge the differences between the Congress Party and the Muslim League, with the latter insisting on a separate country—-Pakistan. Eventually the Mission came up with a plan of its own which was presented as a fait accompli to the two warring parties. The important elements of this plan included the establishment of a Constituent Assembly and a three-tiered federal structure: Group A consisted of 8 Hindu majority provinces; Group B was what would become West Pakistan and Group C was Bengal and Assam. The States would have the right to secede from the Union.

The Muslim League initially welcomed this proposal because it saw in this format the emergence of amenable Muslim-dominated areas that could secede from India at a later stage to create an........

© News18