Syama Prasad Mookerjee (The Hindu Dissent and The Partition of Bengal, 1932-1947)

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The role of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee in demanding the separation of the Hindu majority districts in the western half of Bengal from the proposed East Pakistan has not been studied so far and documented. The 'Right' historians today try to view it as a great triumph for the Hindus while `Secular' ones try to paint Syama Prasad as an 'arch communalist'. Underlying both versions of the story is an assumption that the partition of Bengal was a much sought after goal pursued by Syama Prasad. Yet an impassioned examination of the actual documents show that Syama Prasad tried to work out a formula for the co-existence of the Hindus and the Muslims till the very last.

Only when all attempts, including that of Mahatma Gandhi in the dark days of the Noakhali riots, failed to dissuade the Muslim League from trying to push the subcontinent towards partition that Syama Prasad launched his drive for the separation of the western districts of Bengal from East Pakistan. Partition was the bane of the Hindu Mahasabha. They had called a hartal on 3 July 1947 to register their disapproval of the idea. But once partition gained acceptance at all levels, beginning from the Congress to the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten, Syama Prasad saw no alternative to making the best of a bad bargain and pushed for partition.

The bloodbath of 16 August 1946 in Calcutta and the reprehensible violation of Hindu women in Noakhali the following October cast the die. He took a leaf out of Master Tara Singh's plans in the Punjab for the regrouping of the provinces by isolating the non-Muslim population from the Muslim majority zones. The Congress Working Committee took the same line passing a resolution on 8 March 1947 in favour of the isolation of the non-Muslim areas in the Punjab from the predominantly Muslim ones. This strengthened Syama Prasad's case for the partition of Bengal. But this was a last resort measure failing all other options. Both the Bengal Hindu Mahasabha and Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee were aware of the grave consequences of the measure for the province as this much awaited volume notes, and were pledged to bring back the areas that were lost to Pakistan.

Chhanda Chatterjee retired as Professor of History and Director, Centre for Guru Nanak Dev Studies in Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. Currently she is the nominee of the President of India in the two central universities of Manipur and Tripura.

AS A PROFESSIONAL historian perhaps I owe my readers an explanation regarding what inspired me to venture into a subject which I have chosen to write about. In August 2015 I had to write a review for Professor Tathagata Roy's book The Life and Times of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee: A Complete Biography for the Statesman, an English daily simultaneously published from both Delhi and Kolkata. The book opened a new horizon of thinking for me. I was struck by a sense of shame for my own ignorance of what had been happening in my own province on the eve of the liberation from British rule in spite of having been engaged with the study and teaching of modern Indian history. The history of freedom movement in our school textbooks meant the successive movements launched by Mahatma Gandhi with Jawaharlal Nehru in the background and may be also a bit of Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and Maulana Abul Kalam Azad; Netaji was reduced to a short note in the same category as the Komagata Maru episode. But the test papers never considered it necessary to ask a single question regarding Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee's contribution to our national life. As an undergraduate student I once asked Professor Anil Banerjee to tell me about a book from where I could have a comprehensive idea of our struggle for liberation and Sir looked helplessly and said that no clear interpretation has as yet emerged. While teaching M.Phil classes in Calcutta University in 2000 I had to plead the same helplessness when students wanted to know why the country and especially why our province had to be partitioned. The dominant political interests in the country had simply blacked out any objective discussion of the respective responsibilities for the partitioning of the country and the partitioning of our province.

How far is it justified, it may be argued, that a person who trained as a civil engineer (of all things) ventures to write a foreword to a learned historical treatise by an eminent scholar such as Dr. Chhanda Chatterjee. However, since I have been so asked by the author, 1 shall try to answer the argument. At a stage of my life, in the nineteen nineties, I developed an all-encompassing interest in the partition of India on its eastern flank, and the events immediately preceding and following it. It was partly driven by my anguish at the loss of the village of my ancestors in Brahmanbaria, East Bengal, later known as East Pakistan, and now known as Bangladesh; and also by the strange fact that this anguish is shared by so few who have shared the same fate. As a result, I plunged into a study of the period and the outcome of that were two books'. Hence my interest and hence this foreword. However, I also realised while working on the two hooks that my lack of training as a professional historian was proving to be a serious hurdle in treating the subject. But 1 had to hurry, because a lot of eyewitnesses to the material of the books, I suspected, would not be around much longer. The apprehension proved to be correct. I thereafter hoped that my books, however amateurish, would trigger further research by professionally qualified and competent historians, into this relatively neglected subject - namely the partition an the eastern flank of India, the events leading to it and its consequences. It gives me great satisfaction and pleasure to say that Dr. Chhanda Chatterjee has come forward to undertake that task. Quite a lot of the source material for this research, especially that originating in Bangladesh, is in Bengali which Dr. Chatterjee, being Bengali herself; had no difficulty in obtaining, analysing and dissecting. And I have no hesitation is stating that she has discharged her burden with consummate competence.

THIS STUDY AIMS to understand the circumstances which forced the hands of Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee to assume the leading role in the carving out of the province of West Bengal from the littoral that was soon to become the province of East Pakistan. It was curious that the leadership of this process came from the Hindu Mahasabha, an organization which had been ardently propagating Akhand Hindustan all through the 1940s. While Dr. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the President of the All India Hindu Mahasabha, had been looking for `a plan which will enable the vast majority of Hindus and Muslims to live under circumstances which will give freedom and peace to the common man' and wanted to banish 'the false and foolish idea of Pakistan or Islamic rule' till even September 1946, in May 1947 he had been writing to the Viceroy that Hindus 'must not be compelled to live within the Moslem State and the area where they predominate should be cut off .2 How did this transition come about? What were the compulsions behind such a decision? What part did the political developments in Bengal under the dual scheme of provincial autonomy and the Communal Award of 1932 play in bringing about this turn around in Bengal politics? The answer to all these questions is sought in the following pages.