October 10, 1946 is a date to which history has not done justice. This is a date that should have been etched into the global memory as the date of one of the greatest massacres of modern times. Instead, the record of this massacre has been largely erased, in an institutionalized manner, from our collective memories. In a bloodbath masterminded by Muslim leader Gholam Sarwar Hossaini in Noakhali of present-day Bangladesh, official estimates confirm that at least 5,000 Hindus were butchered. But of course, the numbers could be far higher and deliberately suppressed so as not to give a bad name to the perpetrators: the Muslims of undivided India, intoxicated with religious fanaticism, desperate for an Islamic state. Thousands of Hindu men and women were forcibly converted to Islam, but not before being forced to provide a declaration that they were willingly embracing the one true religion.
Around 50,000 to 750,000 Hindus were driven out of their homes and forced into refugee camps at Agartala, Comilla and Chandpur. Some 50,000 hapless Hindus were marooned in Muslim-dominated areas and compelled to pay jizya, the tax imposed by Muslim rulers on the non-believers to allow them to survive, to the Muslim League. One can never put a number on the estimate of how many Hindu women were raped, gang-raped, and married off to Muslim men.
Why the massacre?
The massacre took place at the time when India’s independence had become a likelihood, as the British were on the verge of deciding to leave the Indian subcontinent. The question was who would inherit the power they left behind. Muhammad Ali Jinnah had already planned and executed the Direct Action Day in Calcutta on August 16, 1946, during which some 50,000 Hindus were butchered. Jinnah thus demonstrated how far he was willing to go for a separate Islamic state. The Noakhali riots were the obvious sequel to this atrocity, and were even ghastlier.
The day of October 10 was deliberately chosen; it was the day of Kojagari Lakshmi Puja, a day of great religious significance, on which Hindu Bengalis fast and offer special prayers to the Goddess Lakshmi, the Hindu deity of wealth and prosperity. Launching attacks on the Hindus when they were absorbed in their prayers would mean not only slaughtering them, but also attacking the religiosity of these children of the “pagan gods.”
The killings were orchestrated and executed by the terror-monger Gholam Sarwar Hossaini, who hailed from a Pir family, and his associate, Kasem. Sarwar Hossaini had been provoking local Muslims against the Hindus for a long time; he was waiting for the perfect occasion to exploit this hatred for action, and the time for that had come.
Mobs of Muslims were incited by a provocative after-prayer provocative speech by Sarwar Hossaini; these crowds, labelled Miya’r fauz (Miya’s army) and Kasemer fauz (Kasem’s army), went on a rampage. Hordes of other community members kept joining them and adding to their strength. The riots started with the looting of a market in the Ramganj police station area.
Eminent Hindu personalities such as Rajendra Lal Roychowdhury became the first targets of the bloodthirsty mobs. Roychowdhury put up a brave fight and went down defending his faith; upon his death, his severed head was presented to Gholam Sarwar Hossaini on a platter. Roychowdhury’s daughters were handed over to the two of Hossaini’s lieutenants. Since Hindu Bengalis worshipped mostly feminine Gods, women, especially those between the ages of 12 to 45, became the primary targets of these mobs. They were raped, often in front of the men of her family, and forcibly converted to Islam. If you find an uncanny resemblance between the modus operandi of the genocidal Muslim mobs of then-India (now Bangladesh) and that of ISIS or the Taliban, don’t be surprised.
A member of a relief committee sent to Noakhali, Miss Muriel Leister, described the scene: “Worst of all was the plight of women. Several of them had to watch their husbands being murdered and then be forcibly converted and married to some of those responsible for their death. Those women had a dead look. It was not despair, nothing so active as that. It was blackness…….”
Hindu freedom fighters such as Lal Mohan Sen were not spared, either. Hindu houses were burned down using gasoline. The use of gasoline in remote areas such as Sandweep, where motor vehicles were uncommon, were evidence of the fact that this was a premeditated attack, planned and prepared days in advance. Temples were gutted as well. Only a handful of Hindus managed to flee, with the help of local Muslims who then seized their property.
The Statesman on October 16, 1946 reported: “In an area of about 200 sq miles the inhabitants surrounded by riotous mobs, are being massacred, their houses being burnt, their womenfolk being forcibly carried away and thousands being subjected to forcible conversion. Thousands of hooligans attacked the villages, compelled them (Hindus) to slaughter their cattle and eat. All places of worship in affected villages have been desecrated. The District Magistrate and the Police Superintendent of Noakhali took no step to prevent it.”
This continued for weeks without any retaliation from the Hindus until the thirteenth day. 120 villages in Noakhali, including Ramganj, Lakshmipur, and Raipur, with a population of 90,000 Hindus, and 70,000 Hindus from adjoining villages of the Comilla district remained besieged by Muslim mobs. No help or rescue squads were sent from the mainland or by national leaders. The Hindus, hungry, thirsty, and humiliated, held on, staring death in the eye. Their temples had been desecrated and their idols destroyed, but the Muslims, eager to erase the last remnants of Hinduism in the souls of these Hindus, forced them to slaughter cows and eat beef. The cow is held holy in Hindu belief, and consuming beef is prohibited.
The main goal of the Noakhali riots was to transform Bengal into Darul Islam, an “Abode of Islam.” Gandhi’s policy of nonviolence did not cut ice there. The rioting stopped only when the Muslims in Bengal learned that the Hindus in Bihar had begun major retaliation for the Hindu genocide in Noakhali; riots had broken out in Chhapra and Saran, and their Muslim brethren in Bihar were now in danger. We’ll cover that story in a future article.
Infidel says
Noakhali was a follow up to Direct Action Day in August 16th 1946, a day when muslims in Calcutta, instigated by the Premier of Bengal Hussein Shahid Suhrawardy, in an attempt to force Hindus to flee that city so that it could be claimed later for Pakistan. For 2 days, muslims rioted until a Hindu meat shop owner by the name Gopal Mukherjee organized a coalition of Bengali and Marwari Hindus to form a militia called Bharat Jatiya Bahini to retaliate against muslims in kind
https://www.opindia.com/2021/07/the-post-poll-violence-in-bengal-where-is-our-gopal-patha
Following this, when Suhrawardy sued for peace, Viceroy Wavell intervened and dismissed his government for the breakdown in law & order. No such luck from Modi or Amit Shah this year. However, that lesson should have sunk in for Hindus: they need to maintain a permanent militia to guard against any jihad, any time. In fact, India needs its own equivalent of the Second Amendment
john smith says
Good post Infidel, and thank you for the link.
jim says
Was the root cause economic inequality? Was it radical extremism with nothing to do with Islam? Could it happen here, and would the news media call it mostly peaceful protests and blame it on conservative Hindus? Were the racist colonialists really to blame? Why is it never brought up when praising the Palestinian BDS and liberation campaigns?
Mikep says
By “Palestinians” are you referring to the Palestinian Jews prior to Israel’s resurrection who later dropped that regional identity to call themselves Israelis in the late 1940s? Or do you mean the phony propaganda narrative of Israel’s declared genocidal adversaries when they hijacked the geographical label for anyone living in the region called Palestine and corrupted it to a nationalist label to support their revised public narrative in the mid-1960s? That’s when they changed it from killing every Jewish man, woman, and child on Arab-Islamic land to a more marketable national liberation movement. In effect it magically transformed from an imperialistic islamic Reclamation Jihad to a movement by a people with no history of being unique and historically people to liberate a country that also never existed as a sovereign state.
Mikep says
“radical extremism,” or nothing more and nothing less than run-of-the-mill muslim activists who were acting according to the dictates of their holy scriptures and the example of their bloodthirsty seventh century warlord prophet? I think the latger.
mortimer says
The Noakhali Riots of 1946 were a dress rehearsal for 1971. Clearly, the Riots were JIHAD in the form of ethnic cleansing. As usual, rape was seen as a part of jihad and Hindus were the usual victims of Muslims in India.
The next great jihad against Benghal Hindus was ‘Operation Searchlight’ in 1971 … a genocidal rampage by the Pakistani army in which 3 million were killed and 400,000 raped in East Pakistan.
Jihad and genocide go together … especially in India where Muslims have murdered 80 million Hindus over the centuries.
Oren says
In some ways the multiculturalists will be remembered just like other tyrants the nazis and the communists who they closely resemble. They cover up the mass murders that do not serve their political objectives, and the people who vote for such leaders dont disagree very much, and they already know they are liars, so when confronted on the horrible policies the left supports, they think to themselves whats one more little lie, whats one instance of mass murder, meanwhile the real tolls are in the millions, and the left has to be dragged lying and accusing, each step of the way, till finally the consent and the flood of evidence will show what they have done in their ignorance and faithlessness. In G-d I trust.
My Shari'a Moor says
It’s also worth noting that every October 10 is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours (in 732 AD – 1,289 yrs ago) when the dauntless Frankish king Charles Martel (“the Hammer”) defeated a huge invading Moslem army, decisively turning back Islam from overrunning central Europe after its hordes had conquered Spain & Portugal 2 decades earlier.
Perhaps some of the Moslems leading the Nokhali atrocities had that stinging historic defeat in mind.
My Shari'a Moor says
It’s also worth noting that every October 10 is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours (in 732 AD – 1,289 yrs ago) when the dauntless Frankish king Charles “The Hammer” Martel defeated a huge invading Moslem army, decisively preventing Islam from overrunning central Europe after its hordes had conquered Spain & Portugal 2 decades earlier.
Perhaps some of the Moslems leading the Noakhali atrocities had that stinging historic defeat in mind.
My Shari'a Moor says
It’s also worth noting that every October 10 is the anniversary of the Battle of Tours (732 AD – 1,289 yrs ago) when the dauntless Frankish king Charles “The Hammer” Martel defeated a huge invading Moslem army, decisively preventing Islam from overrunning central Europe after its hordes had conquered Spain & Portugal 2 decades earlier.
Perhaps some of the Moslems leading the Noakhali atrocities had that stinging historic defeat in mind.
gravenimage says
Noakhali Riots, October 10, 1946: Organized Muslim mobs attacked, raped and slaughtered thousands of Hindu Bengalis
…………
Yes–just horrifying.
And when Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) broke away from Pakistan in 1971, Hindus were often targeted again for rape and murder, even though they were not even the driving force for the break.