Direct Action Day

Direct Action Day (16 August 1946), also known as the Great Calcutta Killings, was a day of widespread riot and manslaughter between Hindus and Muslims in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India. The day also marked the start of what is known as The Week of the Long Knives.

The 'Direct Action' was announced by the Muslim League Council to show the strength of Muslim feelings both to British and Congress because Muslims feared that if the British just pulled out, Muslims would surely suffer at the hands of overwhelming Hindu majority, which resulted in the worst communal riots that British India had seen.

The Muslim League and the Indian National Congress were the two largest political parties in the Constituent Assembly of India in the 1940s. The 1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed an initial plan of composition of the new Dominion of India and its government. However, soon an alternative plan to divide the British Raj into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan was proposed by the Muslim League. The Congress rejected the alternative proposal outright. The Muslim League planned a general strike (hartal) on 16 August, terming it as Direct Action Day, to protest this rejection and assert its demand for a separate Muslim homeland.

In those days the situation in Bengal was particularly complex. In the province, Muslims represented the majority of the population (56%, as against 42% of Hindus) and were mostly concentrated in the eastern part. As a result of this demographic structure and specific developments, this province was the only one in which a Muslim League government was in power under the provincial autonomy scheme introduced in 1935 in coalition with the Europeans, and against the hurdle of strong opposition from the Congress, the Communist Party of India and also from a Hindu nationalist party, the Hindu Mahasabha. The latter was supported by many members of the rich Marwari trading community, composed of immigrants from Rajasthan, who largely dominated the economy of central Calcutta (although European capital was still important). In consequence, the inhabitants of Calcutta, 64% Hindus and 33% Muslims, were by then divided into two highly antagonistic entities. Against this backdrop, the protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta. More than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours. This violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province. These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.

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