Page 108 - GANDHI A Biography for Children and Beginners

GANDHI – A Biography for children and beginners

be a party to their "campaign to dominate the Muslims and other non-Hindus".

He would now discard constitutional methods and take to "Direct Action" to

achieve Pakistan. He appealed to the Muslims to observe the 16th of August
1946 as Direct Action Day.

Against whom was the Direct Action planned? The British Government? The

Congress? The Hindus? What would be the means? The answer came in Calcutta
on the 16th of August. On that day, Muslim 'hooligans' went on a rampage,

killing hundreds of Hindus, raping Hindu women and killing innocent children. It

looked as though elaborate preparations had been made, and arms had been
collected and stockpiled. For two days the Hindus were dazed. But then they

rallied, killed, looted, raped and set fire to property as Muslims had done. The

casualties were high on both sides. Many houses and buildings lay in embers.

The reprisals by the Hindus resulted in further reprisals by the Muslims in areas

where they were in absolute majority. One of these areas was the district of

Noakhali in East Bengal. It became the scene of an unprecedented carnage.

Hardly a handful of Hindu huts and families could survive the onslaught. Hindu
men, women and children were slaughtered. Some were forcibly converted to

Islam. Women were subjected to repeated rape and humiliation. Some were

kidnapped and subjected to forcible "marriages". Some committed suicide to
escape rape or capture. The charred remains of houses stood as reminders of

the insanity and inhuman cruelty that had ravaged the fair green land where

Hindus and Muslims had lived like blood brothers for centuries, speaking the

same language, singing the same songs, sowing, and reaping the same harvests
and sharing each other's joys and sorrows.

Gandhi heard of the great Calcutta Killing when he was in his Ashram at

Sevagram. He rushed to Delhi to proceed to Calcutta. At Delhi, he, as well as
the country, came to know of the holocaust in Noakhali. For nearly a week the

Government of Bengal, under Suhrawardy, had censored and suppressed the

news. When the reports of the carnage and rape in Noakhali reached Bihar
where Hindus were in a majority there was a deafening and stunning echo.

Muslims were killed and raped. Their houses were gutted by arson, and looted.

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