Hindu Refugees and The Rise of The “Left” In Bengal
The rise of the Communist movement in Bengal after independence is one of the most fascinating events in Indian politics. Why Bengali Hindu refugees from East Bengal associated themselves with the Left movement instead of joining with so called Hindu Nationalist parties and various other such commonly raised queries about the politics of Bengal shall be explained here.
CONGRESS AFTER PARTITION
After the partition, the Congress developed an antagonistic attitude towards Hindus of East Pakistan (East Bengal) in general.
Having botched up the partition (with only 35% of Bengal becoming part of India, as explained in my previous article) and having neither made any preparations for population exchange nor any plan for rehabilitation of Hindu refugees (which they promised before Partition to mobilise public opinion of Hindus in East Bengal in favour of partition), the Congress under the leadership of Nehru was clueless on how to manage the situation with Millions of refugees pouring in (3.3 million Hindus would migrate between 1947 and 1950).
As angry refugees, frustrated at Congress party’s betrayal, began pouring in, the Congress tried its best to stop the refugee inflow by deliberately denying them any permanent rehabilitation. The only relief they were provided was food. It was desperate to send the Hindus back to Pakistan. The ones who came the earliest, in 1947, were mostly government servants from middle class landed background, who came to India. They could not be sent back. But as more and more refugees began migrating into West Bengal (80-85% of the refugees ended up in West Bengal), and they kept migrating despite the Nehru Liaqat pact (mentioned in the previous article), the Congress employed various tactics to keep the Hindus refugees away from India and send them back to East Pakistan.
A large number of refugees after denied being housing & rehabilitation took matters into their own hands. They forcefully began to occupy (“Jobor Dokhol” as it was known) properties in and around Calcutta. Properties belonging to Muslims in sparsely populated areas south of Calcutta around Jadavpur and beyond, Army barracks used by American soldiers during World War 2, land belonging to Indian army cantonments, rich absentee Landlords from West Bengal, empty public spaces, jungles & marshlands on the periphery of Calcutta and suburban towns, uncultivated lands – every piece of available land was targeted. In some cases, Hindu immigrants rioted against Muslims, drove them away and grabbed their land and houses. Of course, some well to do refugees from landed background had houses in Calcutta, other middle-class Hindus from the East (like the ones from Bikrampur in Dhaka) worked in Calcutta and had distant relatives and extended family members (also from the East) who settled in Calcutta way before partition. These contacts helped them settle even easier.
The Congress led central and state governments responded to this situation with Police brutality. The entire state machinery was used to arrest Hindu refugees who were declared “unruly” and threat to public order. Hindus organising meetings to demand basic rights (in some cases food) were brutally beaten up; political activists, both from Opposition parties and Congressmen from East Bengal speaking on behalf of the Hindu refugees were detained. There were attempts to even forcefully evict refugees from lands which they had grabbed from Muslims who had fled to Pakistan. Draconian laws like the “Security Bill” were being brought in to make it easier for police to crackdown on Hindu refugees and their supporters in opposition parties.
The Congress high command’s attitude towards Hindus of East Bengal (including Congressmen from there) can be explained by how it split the Congress organisation in Bengal.
In Bengal, the Congress faction which controlled the party funds and was loyal to Gandhi and Gandhians led by Sardar Patel was known as the “Hooghly group”. This group led by Prafulla Chandra Sen (whose political base was Arambagh in Hooghly), Ajoy Mukherjee from Midnapore and Atulya Ghosh owed their posts in Congress hierarchy to MK Gandhi. They were loyal to Gandhi, had ties with Moneybags who financed Congress and wanted India’s colonial era commercial ties with Britain to remain intact even after “independence”. So quite naturally the Congress high command (led by Gandhi who was still alive) wanted the control of the party in Bengal to remain with this group.
The Hooghly group swung into action by early 1948. Prafulla Chandra Ghosh, the 1st Chief Minister of Independent Indian state of West Bengal was removed in January 1948 and replaced by Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy (BCR) a Gandhi loyalist (though not part of any faction) , close to Congress’s financiers (their personal physician) and Calcutta’s anglicised elite circles – many of whom wanted Independent India to be a continuation of the Raj. It is said that Prafulla Ghosh’s ‘fault’ was that he refused to induct GD Birla’s crony into the Cabinet despite being instructed by Gandhi (Ghosh was a revolutionary turned Gandhian) and his sympathy towards Hindu refugees from East Pakistan since he was from Dhaka.
Having installed BCR as the Chief Minister, the high command made Nalini Ranjan Sarkar the finance minister. His ‘qualification’ being a rich businessman with interests in insurance sector and a close aide of Congress financiers. Then the Congress high command with its regional “Hooghly group” allies decided to split the party organisation in Bengal and disband the East Bengal unit so that only the West Bengal unit would continue to exist. As a part of this plan, a new qualification rule was introduced for joining Congress by which one had to be a resident of West Bengal as of 1940 in order to become part of the West Bengal unit of Congress. So Congressmen from East Bengal (now hapless refugees in West Bengal, fighting for the rights of other refugees) could NOT become part of the party’s West Bengal unit (exceptions were made for loyalists like Kiran Shankar Ray from Dhaka, the home minister and Nalini who was from Mymensingh) and East Bengal unit did not exist; they were now declared unwanted. One reason was that many of the Congressmen from the East were former revolutionaries – they were neither loyal to Gandhi and Nehru, nor did they like to see Congress and the Indian government being hijacked by financiers.
Sardar Patel even suggested that East Bengal congressmen should go back to East Pakistan (where much of their property had already been taken away forcefully) and fight for Hindus living there against the full might of the Pakistani state machinery, knowing very well the consequences.
So, in this way, the Congress high command with the support of Dr. BC Ray and the Hooghly group took control of the party in Bengal and over the next decade continued to oppress Hindu refugees. Attempts were made to shift refugees to inhospitable, unliveable places like Dandakaranya where much of the land was arid and unfit for cultivation. In another policy, the Indian government led by Nehru in 1952 decided that any Hindu from East Pakistan wanting to cross over to India would need a Pakistani passport and a permit on the Indian border. If a Hindu was denied a passport by the Pakistani government, he would be trapped inside Pakistan.
It was in this backdrop that the “Left” movement gained momentum and created goodwill among the Hindu refugees who ultimately became the backbone of the Left parties, especially CPI and CPIM (after 1964).
HINDU MAHASABHA’S RESPONSE TO CONGRESS POLICIES AND ITS PROBLEMS
The Hindu Mahasabha after 1947 began to work among the refugees. Helping them settling in various colonies, providing relief, organising the refugees, lobbying with the State and Central government for assistance (which never came) and protesting against the high handedness of the state machinery. It did what other opposition parties did. It even joined hands with other opposition parties (led by RSP, Forward Bloc, CPI, Congressmen from the East, Socialists) and formed the Nikhil Vanga Karma Parishad and later the United Central Refugee Council (UCRC) as a political front of the Hindu refugees.
On the eve of 1952 elections, the Hindu Mahasabha (HMS) and the newly formed Bharatiya Jana Sangh (BJS) led by Syama Prasad Mookerjee (who quit the HMS & formed the new party) had a lot of goodwill among the Hindu refugees. But they could not translate that into electoral success. The only exception was Mookerjee himself, whose personal popularity enabled him to win the general elections from refugee dominated Calcutta South East constituency.
The two saffron parties contested elections separately and won their 13 Vidhan Sabha seats (9 for BHS, 4 for HMS) from South western part of 24 Parganas, Medinipur and Bankura (where refugee population was negligible). Of the 3 Lok Sabha seats (2 for BJS, 1 for HMS) only 1 was from a refugee dominated area.
There were several reasons behind this failure. To begin with, the party in Bengal was leaderless for quite some time. With Syama Prasad Mookerjee in Delhi (he was the minister of industries and civil supplies in Nehru’s cabinet) and his subsequent departure from the HMS and split in the organisation, infighting within the remaining HMS, lack of militant instinct which the Leftists had, the inability of BJS to establish a coherent party organisation in Bengal as it was formed right before elections and massive loss of organisation & resources in the East – all of which handicapped the Hindu parties. After all, before 1947, East Bengal was the political base of the HMS. Its social base comprised of a large section of Namasudra peasantry from Barisal, Faridpur, Dhaka, a substantial chunk of the middle class, religious organisations like the Bharat Sevashram Sangha and prominent intellectuals (Ramananda Chatterjee), academics (Suniti Kumar Chatterjee) historians (RC Majumdar, Kalidas Nag), Swadeshi industrialists (like “Acharya” PC Ray) and scientists (like Meghnad Saha). Plus a large chunk of traditional HMS supporters, especially Namasudras, could not come to India all at once. They only started migrating in early 1950. As of 1951, 3.3 million migrated Hindus formed only 25% of the Hindu population of East Pakistan (5 Lakh Hindus were sent back by the Indian government). East Pakistan in 1951 still had 9 million Hindus.
Apart from these drawbacks, Gandhi’s assassination too created problems for the HMS. After 1950, the party went into oblivion, with the exception of NC Chatterjee who continued to win Lok Sabha elections from Burdwan till the 1960s, when he once contested as an independent with the support of the Communists. After Syama Prasad Mookerjee’s death in 1953, BJS too met the same fate as leaders from Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh took over the party and withdrew itself from active Bengal politics. The reason behind its decision to withdraw from Bengal’s politics remains unknown.
THE RISE OF THE LEFT
The different shades of the “Left” in Bengal (Communist and Non-Communist groups) traced their origins to the revolutionary organisations Anushilan Samiti and Jugantar.
By 1920s, many of the activists were arrested and jailed for participating in armed rebellion against the British. Others entered into mass politics by joining different factions of the Congress. It was here that the revolutionaries split into different groups. One group joined HMS, others became Subhas Bose’s loyalists within Congress & opposed Gandhi (these people later joined Forward bloc), some joined Congress socialist party (which later split & became RSP), some remained in Congress but not loyal to Gandhi and the remaining were “converted” to Communism over a period of time and joined the Communist Party of India (CPI). The turn towards the “Left” happened mainly as a response to Gandhi’s association with various Industrialists and businessmen. There was a deep-rooted suspicion that those men with deep pockets wanted India to either remain a British dominion or in an event of independence, maintain India’s commercial ties with Britain. These moneybags publicly denounced revolutionaries who attempted armed rebellion against the British – which made them anathema to the revolutionaries. The rising clout of businessmen within Congress and Gandhi’s inner circles was seen as an attempt to steer the Congress into a different direction, thereby sabotaging the entire freedom struggle.
Also, many revolutionaries and political activists, especially from Eastern part of Bengal were brainwashed in Jail, converted to Communism as a deliberate British policy of ideological subversion of the revolutionaries. Revolutionaries were fed with propaganda material about how they were part of a global revolution – Communist party leadership in India was still subservient to the British Communist Party and this was exploited by the colonizer. Other groups of Communists were mostly from elite families who fell for communism while studying in England.
Nevertheless, on the eve of India’s “independence” & partition, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was only a fringe player in Bengal politics with most of its members were either from East Bengal or of East Bengal origins, but living in Calcutta. Other Leftist groups had substantial support base – though mostly among the Middle class of East Bengal.
When partition happened, initially many CPI leaders (almost all of whom were Hindus) stayed back in East Pakistan as they were ordered by the party leader PC Joshi. Joshi supported Nehru’s stand on Bengali Hindus, which is that Bengali Hindus shall remain in East Pakistan under the rule of the Islamic state and they shall not be allowed to come to India. It was told that if they did migrate, they would be sent back. But with the change in leadership of CPI, the party’s members from East Pakistan migrated to West Bengal and began to work in refugee colonies. Other Left activists too came to India as they would have been the first ones to be targeted by the Pakistani government as they were considered Hindu leaders by the Muslim leadership. In West Bengal, the Left parties joined hands with Congressmen from the East and the Hindu Mahasabha and worked tirelessly among the refugees. While the HMS was leaderless and faction ridden and the Congressmen were trying to save their place in the party, the CPI remained united. Their disciplined cadres worked with militant zeal. Above all, they were the most radical in their approach and didn’t hesitate to fight the police and state machinery. The Left parties and their cadres were more successful in creating a base among the refugees by exploiting their kith & kin ties and networks which they shared with the predominantly rural refugees from the pre-partition days. For a refugee, an activist of a Left party was less of a political activist, more of a distant relative from the same district. The ban on CPI in Bengal by the BC Roy government and further police brutality on CPI activists (who also happened to be refugees) only generated more sympathy for the CPI among the refugee population.
After SPM’s untimely death in 1953, the Left parties hijacked the United Central Refugee Council and became the de-facto representatives of the Bengali Hindu refugee community. The Left parties, especially Forward Bloc and RSP maintained strong Pro-Hindu image. Even the CPI successfully pretended to be a Bengali Hindu party that was fighting for the interests of Bengali Hindu refugees against the Central government which by 1950s had acquired an image of being “anti-Bengali Hindu”. This image would remain till 1971. Indeed when the Bengali Hindus voted for CPI candidates in 1952, 1957 elections, they were not voting because the voters believed in Communism or Marxism /Leninism/Maoism. The average supporter of the Left were not communist by ideology or doctrine then. They voted for the Left because the Left spoke for the interest of the Hindu refugees. CPI in Bengal was only a more subtle version of Jana Sangh in Delhi. At the grassroots level, the Left cadres participated and even patronised Hindu festivals, “sarvajanik” Pujas, various cultural events.
Throughout the 1950s, Left parties continued to demand proper rehabilitation for Hindus. It even opposed Congress party’s plan to forcefully send Namasudra refugees to Dandakaranya. Besides, it called for the legalization of squatter colonies established by refugees. Apart from that, it opposed the Bihar-Bengal merger proposed by the Congress which would have put more burden on Bengal’s finances (in any case they got a raw deal in first 5 year plan). Lok Sevak Sangh, the party which successfully ensure Manbhum’s (Purulia) merger with Bengal, too joined the Left, which expanded the Left parties’ base into Purulia. Above all, it emerged as the most articulate voice against Central government’s economic policies which led to the economic stagnation of Bengal (an average Bengali Hindu in 1960 in all likelihood was relatively poorer than what he was in 1940). The claim made by a section of the Leftists, that India did not witness independence in 1947, but a mere transfer of power from the British to its Indian loyalists and that independent India was a continuation of the British raj, struck a chord among the educated Bengali middle class who faced violence at the hands of the State machinery. Indeed, not only the Congress retained every single British institution (Police, Army, Bureaucracy, judiciary who functioned in colonial style, even Christian missionaries and lot more), instead of severing ties with the British, it deepened its ties. India’s ties with British commercial networks remained. In Calcutta, even in the 1960s, most public utilities were owned by Britain and managed by the British, with the profits going to London.
The Left’s real test of character came in 1964 when anti-Hindu riots began in East Pakistan in December 1963 and by early 1964, more than 6 Lakh Hindus migrated to India (mostly to West Bengal, few migrants to Assam and Tripura). As usual, the Congress government under Nehru remained mute spectators. And once again it was the Left parties that took to the streets and protested against the persecution of Hindus in East Pakistan. So violent were these demonstrations that anti-Muslim riots broke out in Calcutta, especially in the “minority” ghettos around refugee colonies. The rioters were mainly the Hindu refugees themselves. The Left even urged the Indian government to allow free flow of Hindus from East Pakistan to India. The Congress led state and central governments continued their tradition of high handedness and began arresting Hindu leaders (including leaders from the Namasudra community, Pramatha Ranjan Thakur and Jogendranath Mandal) for protesting against large scale violence being perpetrated on Hindus in East Pakistan and advocating economic blockade of Pakistan. The interventions made by the Left leaders in the Legislative Council (Vidhan Parishad) during the turbulent months of early 1964 can be seen in the archives of West Bengal legislative council which are available in Public domain. It reveals how the Left projected themselves as the defender of Bengali Hindu interests. When those Muslims, whose properties were taken over by refugees and driven away to Pakistan, came back to reclaim their assets, the Left stood in support of the refugees. The Left also raised the issue of infiltration of Pakistani Muslims and intelligence agencies into Indian territory which threatened India’s National Security. So, it does not come as a surprise that by 1967, when the Left parties tasted power for the first time, as part of the United Front, they had firmly cemented their position as a party of Bengali Hindu refugees.
The Left continued with this trend till the early 1970s. The secularization of the Left, especially the Communist parties and their turn towards “Secular” politics happened after 1971 – as a result of their ideology being taught to masses through the elite intelligentsia of the party – thanks to Indira Gandhi handing complete power over education institutions to them. They eventually began to show signs of being “anti Hindu” only after 1977, when they got an absolute majority in Bengal and came to power – but such over ‘anti-Hindu’ behaviour was still muted in public and kept out of newspapers by government machinery. The trend, of course, was started by CPI(M) under Jyoti Basu but the ideological foundations were laid in the 1930s by Communist Party of Great Britain. The trend was set by elite Leftist intellectuals and academics (especially card carrying members of CPI) patronized by Nehru’s establishment from the 1950s onwards and made more powerful by his daughter, Indira. That, of course, is a different history.
References:
- “The Marginal Men” by Prafulla K. Chakrabarti
- “Calcutta, The Stormy Decades” by Tanika Sarkar and Sekhar Bandopadhyay
- “The Spoils of Partition” by Joya Chatterji
