Riots in East Pakistan
The 1950 East Pakistan riots (, ) took place between Hindus and Muslims in East Pakistan, which resulted in several thousands of Hindus being killed in pogroms.
Background.
In August 1947, British India was partitioned into the Dominions of India and Pakistan on the basis of religion. Pakistan was to become the homeland for the Muslims of former British India with a majority Muslim population. The province of Bengal with a marginal Muslim majority was also partitioned with the Muslim majority East Bengal going to Pakistan and Hindu majority West Bengal going to India. The Sylhet district of Assam was added to East Bengal after the Sylhet Referendum, where the majority voted for Pakistan. According to the 1941 census, East Bengal had 28% non-Muslim population, the majority of them being Bengali Hindus. West Bengal has a 30.2% Muslim population, the rest were Hindus.
The area comprising East Bengal, especially the Dhaka and Chittagong Divisions, had been witness to numerous instances of ethnic violence in the decades preceding the Partition. In the 1940s, the frequency and intensity of the riots increased as the movement for Pakistan gained momentum. In the last quarter of 1946, the Bengali Hindus of Noakhali and Tippera districts were subjected to a series of massacres, loot, arson, rape, abduction. They forced conversion to Islam, which came to be known as the Noakhali riots.
Within a month after the Partition, the Janmashtami procession was attacked in Dhaka. In 1948, the Dhamrai rathyatra and the Janmashtami procession was not allowed to be held. In 1949, there were posters all over Dhaka against the Durga Puja. The number of community pujas got drastically reduced. On the day of Vijayadashami hundreds of Hindu households were set on fire rendering around 750 Hindu families homeless. Santosh Chatterjee, a Press Trust of India (PTI) correspondent, was imprisoned on 25 November 1949 without any charges and released after a month.
Atrocities (Aug 1949 - Jan 1950).
In August 1949, atrocities on non-Muslims began all over East Pakistan and continued for three months. In August, Muslim mobs along with the police and the Ansars attacked some Hindu villages in Beanibazar and Barlekha police station areas of Sylhet District. Houses were looted, destroyed and set on fire. Hindu villagers were assaulted and murdered. Hindu women were raped by the policemen. Soon after the Hindus were attacked in the village of Bhandaria in Barisal District. In Rajshahi District, Father Thomas Cattaneo reported that the Santhal villages were attacked, Santhal villagers were arrested and Santhal women were raped. On 10 December, a Muslim mob attacked the Puthia Rajbari Palace in Rajshahi Division and forcibly took possession of the house and its treasures.
Kalshira massacre.
On 20 December 1949, four police constables raided the house of one Joydev Brahma in the village of Kalshira under Mollahat police station in Bagerhat sub-division in the district of Khulna, in search of some suspected communists, late in the night. Having failed to find any suspects, the constables tried to rape the wife of Brahma. Her cry alerted him and his companions, who in a desperate bid to save her attacked two constables, one of whom died on the spot. The remaining two raised an alarm and the neighbouring people came to their rescue. On the next day, the District Superintendent of Police arrived in Kalshira accompanied by armed police contingent and the Ansars and attacked Kalshira and other neighbouring Hindu villages mercilessly. They encouraged Muslims from neighbouring villages to loot the Hindu properties. A number of Hindus were killed, men and women were forcibly converted. Images were broken and shrines were desecrated. All the 350 homesteads in the village, except three, were demolished. The cattle and boats were forcibly taken away. Within a month of the massacre 30,000 Hindus fled from Khulna to India.
Nachole massacre.
Nachole was a police station in the Nawabganj sub-division of the Rajshahi district. During the Partition of India, the entire Nawabganj sub-division was transferred from Malda district, which went to India, to Rajshahi district that fell in Pakistan. The area under Nachole police station was the non-Muslim majority. It was inhabited by Santals and Bengali Hindu castes like the Kshatriyas, Bhuindas and Kaibartas. After the Partition, the Tebhaga Movement was brutally suppressed in the newly formed state of Pakistan. However, in Nachole, the movement was still alive through the covert activities of the leading operating from underground. From the autumn of 1949, the leaders began to succeed in implementing the Tebhaga principles through persuasion, coercion and in some cases, force.
On 5 January 1950, five policemen from the Nachole police station were killed by the Santals in Chandipur village after they opened fire to disperse the villagers who had gathered to protest the arrest of one of the villagers. The government of Pakistan responded to this incident by sending a 2,000 strong army contingent and the police and the Ansars on 7 January. They set fire to twelve villages, ransacked the huts and killed many villagers on their way to Chandipur. In Chandipur, they tortured the men, raped the women and set fire to the dwellings. Hundreds of Santals and Hindus were killed. At Rohanpur, Ila Mitra, one of the movement leaders, was arrested with hundreds of peasants. After being taken to the Nachole police station, they were tortured by the police to extract the name of the leaders. Around 70 to 100 peasants died of police excesses. Ila Mitra was tortured and raped for four days before being transferred to Nawabganj police station.
Prelude.
In the Feni sub-division of Noakhali, the Hindus were attacked on 2 February, even before the attacks had actually broken out in Dhaka. One Hindu was killed and seven injured. Nine Hindu shops were looted.
Killings.
Dhaka District.
In February 1950, Sukumar Sen, the Chief Secretary of West Bengal, had travelled to Dhaka to hold the Chief Secretary level dialogue with his East Bengal counterpart Aziz Ahmed. On 10 February, at around 10 A.M., when the talks were in progress, a Muslim woman in blood-stained clothes was paraded in the Secretariat building. It was alleged that she had been raped in Kolkata. The Secretariat employees immediately struck work and started a procession shouting anti-Hindu slogans. As they progressed towards Nawabpur, many others joined the procession, which ended at Victoria Park. At 12 noon, a rally was held at the park where the speakers, some of the employees of the Secretariat, made fierce anti-Hindu speeches. At around 1 P.M., as soon as the rally broke, the crowd began to loot Hindu shops and houses and set them on fire. The Hindus were killed wherever they were found. By the evening, 90% of Hindu shops in Dhaka were looted, and many burnt. The Hindu jewellery shops were looted in the presence of police officers. An estimated 50,000 Hindus were displaced in seven hours of murder, loot, and arson. According to the PTI reports, the worst affected areas were Banagram and Makims Lane. Most of the houses in the two predominantly Hindu localities were completely looted, many completely burnt down and places of worship desecrated. Tajuddin Ahmed, who travelled in the different parts of Dhaka between 1 pm to 6 pm acknowledged the destruction and loss inflicted upon the Hindus by the Muslims in the localities of Nawabpur, Sadarghat, Patuatuli, Islampur, Digbazar, English Road, Bangshal and Chowk Bazaar. On the afternoon of 12 February, 60 India-bound Hindu passengers were attacked at the Kurmitola airport. All the non-Muslim passengers arriving at the Tejgaon airport were stabbed. Three days after the massacre started in Dhaka, the villages of Vikrampur and Lohajang were attacked. On 15 February, the Simulia market was set on fire, and the Hindu shops were looted. Between 15 February and 1 March, there were 15 instances of stabbing on Hindus reported from Dighali and Lohajang. On 28 February, the Dighali market was burnt down; the Hindu shops were gutted. In Parulla village under Kaliganj police station, all the Hindu houses were looted. All the Hindu houses in the villages of Khsawala, Gazaria, Karar Char, Char Sindur, Palas and Sadhar Char were looted. According to Indian government sources, the bodies of 200 Hindu victims were cremated in the first two days of violence. They also claimed that 50,000 out of Dhaka's 80,000 Hindus had to flee their homes during the attacks. On 24 February 1950, the U.S. ambassador to India wrote to the U.S. Secretary of State that between 600 and 1,000 Hindus were killed and thousands injured in Dhaka area.
Barisal District.
In Barisal, riots started on 13 February. Hindus were killed, raped and abducted indiscriminately. According to the press note of the government of East Bengal, two unidentified youths began to spread provocative rumours on the afternoon of 13 February in the town of Barisal. As a result, many of the shops in the market closed down. Another rumour was spread that Fazlul Haque had been murdered in Kolkata. At nightfall, eight places were set on fire. 30 houses and shops were reduced to ashes, and ten persons were severely burnt. The situation further deteriorated after 16 February when indiscriminate loot and arson of Hindu properties started in Gournadi, Jhalakati and Nalchiti under Sadar sub-division of Barisal district. The Hindu passengers on the water route between Barisal and Dhaka were killed within the steamer and thrown in the river.
In the river port of Muladi in Barisal District, several hundred Hindus took shelter in the police station after their homes were torched. They were later attacked within the police station compound, and most of them were killed within the precincts of the police station. A Hindu school teacher was roasted alive by his Muslim students, who danced around the fire. In the village of Madhabpasha, under Babugunge police station presently Babuganj Upazila, two to three hundred Hindus were rounded up by a Muslim mob. They were made to squat in a row, and their heads were chopped off one by one with a "ramda". In the Madhabpasha zamindar house, 200 Hindus were killed and 40 injured.
Ilsaghat is a steamer station on the Meghna, on the island of Bhola, 7 miles from Bhola town. It falls on the steamer route between Barisal and Chittagong. On 16 February 1950, the S.S.Sitakunda of the Royal Steam Navigation Company anchored at Ilsaghat on her way to Chittagong. At Ilsaghat, several Hindu passengers from S.S. We've Gone boarded S.S.Sitakunda due to atrocities perpetrated on them by the crew. Around 8 P.M. that night, hundreds of Muslims attacked S.S.Sitakunda while still anchored at the steamer station. They massacred the unarmed Hindu passengers and threw them into the river. 30 Hindus were killed in the massacre, while three survived.
According to contemporary Muslim eyewitnesses a few thousand Hindus were killed and about two thousand Hindus went missing from Barisal district alone. Researcher Subhasri Ghosh has put the number of Bengali Hindus killed in Barisal District at around 2,500. Documentary filmmaker Supriyo Sen estimated that as many as 650,000 Hindus attempted to flee from Barisal to India and on their way were looted, killed and abducted.
Chittagong District.
On 12 February anti-Hindu riots started in Chittagong. The riots were instigated and organized by Fazlul Quader Chowdhury. At night the city went up in flames. Hindus were killed in Chittagong proper and adjoining areas such as Noapara, Chowdhury Hat, Patiya, Boalkhali and Sitakunda. In one incident, almost all the Hindu passengers of a train were killed in Pahartali. The Hindu pilgrims who had assembled in Sitakunda on the occasion of Maha Shivaratri were attacked by Muslim mobs. Nellie Sengupta, member of East Bengal assembly from Chittagong wrote to the Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan about the anti-Hindu riots in Chittagong.
In Chittagong District, four persons from the Buddhist community, including a police inspector, were stabbed, and monasteries were demolished. The residences of some Buddhist families in Fatickchari police station area and that of a Buddhist zamindar in Lamburhat under Rowjan police station was burnt to ashes. As a consequence large numbers of Buddhist people migrated to the Lushai Hills in India.
After the pogroms, Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, the erstwhile Chief Minister of West Bengal went to visit Chittagong. Sanjib Prasad Sen, a former anti-British revolutionary took him on a tour of the affected areas. With the help from former revolutionaries Binod Bihari Chowdhury and Birendra Lal Chowdhury, Sen prepared a list of persons killed in the riots.
Noakhali