The famine also radicalized politics. Between 1943 and
1947, the city saw major confrontations between communist
and leftist student groups and the police. Disruption through
protest marches and police opening fire became commonplace.
Below the surface however, another form of violence was brewing:
the specter of communal insurgency. Through the first decades
of the 20th century the Muslims of Bengal, who formed the
majority, had been gradually craving out a separate identity
for themselves and found in the Muslim League a mouthpiece
for their aspirations. The demand for Pakistan as a separate
state for the Muslims aggravated Hindu-Muslim tensions. In
the 1940s Bengal was under a Muslim League government, which
declared 16 August 1946 as “Direct Action Day”
to secure its demand for Pakistan. That day witnessed communal
killing on an unprecedented scale. Even today it is impossible
to assess the exact number of those killed. Eyewitnesses described
heaps of dead bodies on the streets. For a full day, in certain
sensitive areas for longer, the city became a killing field
for mercenaries. Both communities, described by contemporaries
as “The Great Calcutta Killing”, perpetrated slaughter,
rape and plunder. The trauma of the famine and communal violence
was followed by the horrors of Partition. Millions who had
lived in East Bengal became homeless refugees on the streets
of Calcutta, which consequently became a city whose infrastructure
was totally incapable of coping with this human Diaspora..
Many of the problems, which today plague the city, have their
roots in this sudden upsurge in population.
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