On the 16th of August, 1946, Mohammad Ali Jinnah gave a call to fellow Muslims across India for a “Direct Action Day” on the streets of Kolkata (then Calcutta). Many provocative speeches were made and this resulted in one of the worst massacres in history – the Calcutta Killings. Sword-wielding Islamists went on a killing spree and nearly 10,000 people were killed and up to 15,000 wounded in a span of 3 days.
Today on the 75th anniversary of horrific ‘Direct Action Day’ also known as the 1946 Calcutta Killings journalist Abhijit Majumder shared a series of videos wherein Rabindranath Dutta, a survivor of the Direct Action Day and the subsequent Noakhali Riots was seen recalled the brutality Islamists had inflicted on innocent Hindu women during those days.
August 16, 1946. Direct Action Day.
— Abhijit Majumder (@abhijitmajumder) August 16, 2022
Survivor of #DIrectActionDay and Noakhali riots, Rabindranath Dutta (92) recalls how naked, butchered bodies of H women were hung from hooks at Raja Bazar beef shops.
Victoria College girls were raped, killed and bodies tied to hostel windows. pic.twitter.com/sToZMFarEv
In a video shared by the journalist, Rabindranath Dutta recalled the inexplicable violence and brutality that Islamists had unleashed, especially on Hindu women during the 1946 massacre that started with the announcement of ‘Direct Action Day’ by the Muslim League. He reminisced how Islamists hung the naked, butchered bodies of Hindu women from hooks at Kolkata’s Raja Bazar beef shops.
The 92-year-old Rabindranath Dutta, who claimed to have written a few books on ‘Direct Action Day’ is further heard saying in the video that a police official Rabihari Mujumdar (the name is a little unclear in the video) also confirmed to him that during the massacre, girls studying in Kolkata’s Victoria College were raped, killed and their bodies were tied to hostel windows.
He mentioned how all these details are chronicled in his books also. Dutta lamented how Bengalis have forgotten the atrocities inflicted on them during those days.
Journalist Abhijit Mujumdar further Tweeted how the 92-year-old survivor of the Noakhali riots, which was a direct result of Jinnah’s call to fellow Muslims across India for a “Direct Action Day” on the streets of Kolkata (then Calcutta), narrated how he stood watching heaps of slaughtered Hindu bodies with pools of blood around his heels during the 1946 Noakhali Riots.
Mujumdar quoted Dutta as saying that during the 1946 carnage, most Hindu women’s bodies had breasts missing, just black bite marks at those places and the genitals.
Direct Action Day and the Noakhali Riots
Calls for a separate Muslim nation were running high in Bengal in the early 1940s. It was on 16th August 1946 that Direct Action Day was started and it is no coincidence that the 16th of August was the 18th Day of Ramzan, a day when the prophet had launched the Jihad against the pagans of Mecca and massacred them in the bloody Battle of Badr proclaiming the victory over Heathens and Infidels.
In Noakhali, which was not much affected during the Calcutta killings, the violence started on 10 October 1946. These Noakhali riots were a series of semi-organized massacres, mass rapes, abductions and forced conversions of Hindus to Islam and looting and arson of Hindu properties perpetuated by the Muslim community in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of Bengal (now Bangladesh).
The slaughter of Hindus began on October 10th, the day of the Kojagari Lakshmi Puja, and lasted for almost a week. It is estimated that 5,000 were killed and hundreds of Hindu women were brutally raped. Thousands of men and women from the Hindu community were forced to convert. The forcibly converted Hindus were coerced to give written declarations that they had converted to Islam of their own free will.
What is shocking is that these Noakhali riots were orchestrated by some of the most powerful Muslim leaders who went on to hold the reigns of Pakistan. These include Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy who was the then Chief Minister of Bengal and went on to become the Prime Minister of Pakistan.
