1. The details of these books, and more, are in the Bibliography appended to this book.
1. The ceremonial wearing of this thread marks the second birth of a Brahmin boy. It is for this reason that Brahmins are known as dwija, which means twice-born.
2. Nikhilesh, Guha, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the Eyes of His Contemporaries (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute), p. 149.
3. A Bengali Muslim of humble origin, often a convert from a lower-caste Hindu or Buddhist, as distinguished from Ashraf, a high-born one, the ones who claim Turkish, Afghan, Persian or Arab ancestry.
4. Uma Prasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1988), pp. 51.
5. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. xviii.
6. Ibid., pp. 165–66.
7. Sakta is derived from Shakti, another name of Goddess Kali, the Hindu deity most commonly worshipped in Bengal. Padavali means a set of verses.
8. Ram Prasad Sen was a poet and composer of Shyama Sangeet, a variety of Bengali lyric worshipping the Goddess Kali.
9. Guha, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, p. 150.
1. Kishore Maitri (Kolkata: Mitra Institution Bhawanipur Branch and Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2001), p. 81.
2. Uma Prasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1988), p. 5.
3. Sen (1890–1959) initially taught at the University of Calcutta. In 1939, he was appointed the keeper of Imperial Records (which later became the National Archives). In 1949, he resigned from that post and became a professor at the University of Delhi. He is the author of several major works, mostly on the history of the Marathas. In 1956, the Indian government commissioned him to write a history of the First War of Independence of 1857–59. The work, titled Eighteen Fifty-Seven, was published in 1957.
4. Purnendu Banerjee (1917–2000) was the eldest son of Syama Prasad’s second sister, Amala and her husband Pramatha Nath Banerjee, an educationist and minister (for some time) in Fazlul Haq’s cabinet. Purnendu later joined the Indian Foreign Service and served, among other positions, as the permanent representative of India at the United Nations.
5. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2000), p. 121.
6. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 213.
7. Tara Devi was the daughter of Lalit Mohan Chatterjee and a descendant of the great Sanskrit scholars Madan Mohan Tarkalankar and Jogendra Nath Vidyabhushan. She was also the first cousin of Jatindra Nath Mukherjee (Bagha Jatin), mentioned earlier in this chapter, and an aunt of Soumitra Chatterjee, the Bengali film star.
8. Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo, pp. 14–15.
9. Sarvepalli Gopal, Radhakrishnan, A Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 183.
1. Uma Prasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1988), p. 15.
2. Acharya Prafulla Chandra Ray (1861–1944) was a famous academician and chemist and the Palit professor of chemistry in the university. He was also a great enthusiast with regard to nurturing entrepreneurship among Bengalis, founded Bengal Chemical and Pharmaceutical Works, probably the very first pharma company of India, and was a pioneer in many fields of applied chemistry. He was totally dedicated to academics and his students, and died a bachelor. He donated all his life’s earnings to charity. Bap ka beta, an expression in Hindi, means ‘worthy son of a worthy father’. The title ‘Acharya’ (meaning ‘a very learned man’) is an unofficial and informal one conferred upon him.
3. Dinesh Chandra Sinha, Letter dated 6 February 1925, in Shotoborsher Aloy Syamaprasad (Kolkata: Srishti Prakashan, 2002), p. 38.
4. Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo, p. 17.
5. Kishore Maitri (Kolkata: Mitra Institution Bhawanipur Branch and Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2001), p. 219.
6. Reena Bhaduri, ed., Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Educational Speeches, 2nd ed. (Kolkata: A. Mukherjee & Co., 2016), p. 110.
7. Dinesh Chandra Sinha, ‘Shikshachintar Onyotom Ogropothik Syamaprasad’, Desh, 4 July 2001, p. 25.
8. Bhaduri, ed., Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Educational Speeches, p. 44.
9. Kishore Maitri, p. 223.
10. In fact, the national anthem of Sri Lanka, ‘Namo Sri Lanka Matha’, written by Ananda Samarakoon, a disciple of Tagore at Visva-Bharati, was also inspired and influenced by Tagore.
11. Helen M. Nugent, ‘The Communal Award: The Process of Decision-Making’, South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies 2 (1979): pp. 112–29.
1. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), Entries dated 21 October 1944; 6 December 1945, pp. 38, 45–46.
2. ‘How can an organization [the Congress] which subsists on Hindu support but considers it a sin to think or speak on behalf of Hindus contend with another [Muslim League] whose sole purpose is to establish Muslim domination, carry forward the Islamic flag?’ Freely translated from Umaprasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 2001), p. 58.
3. Amales Tripathi, Swadhinatar Mukh (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 1998), pp. 64, 112; V.P. Menon, The Transfer of Power in India (Chennai: Orient Longman, 1957), p. 49.
4. Prominent Indo-Anglian author of the celebrated books Autobiography of an Unknown Indian, The Continent of Circe and Thy Hand, Great Anarch, Nirad C. Chaudhuri at the time was the secretary to Sarat Chandra Bose, the provincial Congress president and Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose’s elder brother, and had the opportunity to observe the political goings-on in the province at close range.
5. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46, pp. 29–33.
6. Ibid. Also Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Thy Hand, Great Anarch (London: Chatto & Windus, 1987).
7. Ibid. pp. 29–30.
8. Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New Delhi: Rupa, 1997), p. 394.
9. The letters stood for Indian Civil Service which, together with the IP (Imperial Police), constituted the ‘steel frame’ of British administration in India. It was a cadre of very highly paid and highly trusted bureaucrats, about half of whom were British and the other half Indian.
10. Proceedings of the Bengal Legislative Assembly, LIII, No. 2, 10 August 1938, p. 99, quoted by Gordon, Brothers against the Raj, p. 365.
11. Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (New Delhi: Rupa, 2001), p. 26.
12. This thesis postulated that India is not one nationality but a conglomeration of some eighteen nationalities, and each one of them had the inherent right to secede. Based on this thesis, the communists extended their full-throated support to the Pakistan demand of the Muslim League, presumably in the hope that they would blossom in Muslim Pakistan, a chance that Hindu India had denied them. Their hope was belied and practically all of them had to leave East and West Pakistan.
13. The Poona Pact (1932) was an agreement signed at the Yeravada Jail, Poona (now Pune), between Gandhi and Ambedkar, whereby the scheduled castes (then called depressed classes) were given reservation with regard to seats in the legislature.
14. The leader of this group, Jogendra Nath Mandal, joined the Muslim League and became the central minister for law and labour in Pakistan after Independence. However, after the government-engineered anti-Hindu pogrom of 1950 in East Pakistan, he protested and was threatened with imprisonment by Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister. He managed to escape to India with Dr Mookerjee’s assistance and sent his resignation from India.
15. Balraj Madhok (1920–2016) was born in Skardu, Baltistan, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir. He joined the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in 1938, and became a pracharak (full-time worker) in 1942. In 1951, he joined Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the formation of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, and remained a trusted lieutenant of him. In 1966–67, he rose to become the president of the Jana Sangh. When the Jana Sangh merged with the Janata Party he left it for ideological reasons and unsuccessfully tried to revive the Jana Sangh.
16. The Congress and the Muslim League (presided over by Jinnah) fought the 1937 elections to the United Provinces assembly on the basis of ‘independent cooperation’. However, the Congress, after winning an absolute majority, refused to form a coalition with the League. It has been commented that this one action ‘revived simmering Muslim suspicions of Hindu absorptive tendencies’, and paved the way for Pakistan. See Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 38.
17. Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 45.
18. Ibid., p. 100.
19. Dr Mookerjee’s statement in Parliament following his resignation from the Union Cabinet, 19 April 1950.
20. Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 43.
1. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 45.
2. The principal scheduled castes in undivided Bengal were the Rajbangshis in north Bengal and Namasudras in south and east Bengal.
3. Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 55.
4. Abul Mansur Ahmad, from Mymensingh, was a prominent anti-League Muslim leader of Bengal during the fateful days of undivided Bengal and post-partition East Pakistan. He was also a close associate of Fazlul Haq. He rose to become a cabinet minister in Pakistan’s central cabinet under Suhrawardy. His autobiography, Amar Dekha Rajneetir Ponchas Bochhor (in Bengali, meaning Fifty Years of Politics as I Have Seen It) is a storehouse of information on the times, of course from his point of view.
5. Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary, p. 58.
6. Ibid., p. 57.
7. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2000), pp. 102–20.
8. Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, p. 110.
9. Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, p. 122.
1. Calcutta’s main business district, now called Netaji Subhas Road.
2. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2000), p. 137.
3. Ibid., p. 106.
4. Ashok Mitra, Tin Kuri Dosh (Kolkata: Dey’s Publishing, 1988), the autobiography of Ashok Mitra of the ICS, later census commissioner of India.
5. Not to be confused with the economist Ashok Mitra, sometime finance minister of West Bengal in the Left Front government, rendered famous by his statement, ‘I am not a gentleman. I am a communist.’
6. A taktaposh is a Spartan bedstead, consisting of a few cheap hardwood planks nailed together to form a horizontal surface, supported on four wooden posts nailed to them. It was the custom in Bengal to store luggage, non-perishable foodstuff and the like below such taktaposhes.
7. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Rashtrasangram o Ponchasher Manwantar (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1998), p. 14.
8. Ibid., p. 16.
9. Ibid., p. 91.
10. Phan is the supernatant starchy liquid left after rice has been boiled in an open container. It is usually thrown away. Nowadays rice is often boiled in pressure cookers which does not produce phan.
1. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Awake Hindusthan (New Delhi: Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee Research Foundation, 2009), pp. 153–55.
2. Prashanto Kumar Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 137.
3. Vasant Moon, Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar, trans. Asha Damle (New Delhi: National Book Trust, 2009), p. 153.
4. Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics, p. 139.
5. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 77. This, in fact, proved prophetic because Gandhi’s ill-advised (by Rajagopalachari) overture to Jinnah later in September 1944 resulted in exactly this, when the staunch anti-League Muslim leaders were forced to join the League, and the Muslims of India, almost to a man, became supporters of the League. Also see Mushirul Hasan, India’s Partition: Process, Strategy, Mobilization (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994), p. 15: ‘The person who consistently opposed the mixing of religion with politics . . . remained on the fringes of Indian politics during the massive pan-Islamic upsurge of the early 1920s, was now prepared to press the ulama into service.’
6. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2000), pp. 64–65.
7. Nikhil Chakravartti later chose journalism over politics, and edited a leftist journal called Mainstream. His wife, Renu, incidentally a niece of Dr Bidhan Chandra Roy, was, however, a Member of Parliament from the undivided Communist Party of India. This association reveals the extent to which the communists were in collusion with the Muslim League. See Sunanda Sanyal et al., The Sickle and the Crescent, mentioned in the Bibliography. Abul Hashim later became famous for his co-authorship, with Sarat Bose, of the (thankfully) abortive scheme for united independent sovereign Bengal, which is discussed in depth in Chapter 8.
8. Uma Prasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh, 1988), p. 46.
9. Ibid.
10. Dr Radha Binod Pal was a jurist of international repute and a member of the Tokyo Tribunal for the trial of Japanese war criminals in World War II. He took a dissenting view, holding that it is the victors who decide what is right and what is not. He is highly regarded in Japan for this view.
11. Dr Bidhan Chandra (B.C.) Roy became the Chief Minister of West Bengal shortly after Independence (1948) and continued till his death in 1962. He was also a legendary physician and was said to possess extra-sensory powers of diagnosis. He was active in Congress politics before Independence. He is highly respected for his efforts to rebuild West Bengal after a traumatic partition, and particularly for his efforts in rehabilitating Hindu refugees from Islamic persecution in East Pakistan.
1. Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, 1932–47 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 99; Bhabani Prasad Chatterjee, Deshbibhag: Poshchat o Nepothyo Kahini (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 1993), p. 86.
2. Leonard A. Gordon, Brothers against the Raj: A Biography of Indian Nationalists Sarat and Subhas Chandra Bose (New Delhi: Rupa, 1997), p. 566, quoting a sociology PhD dissertation by Richard D. Lambert, University of Pennsylvania, 1951.
3. Mizanur Rahman, Krishna Sholoi (Dhaka: Sahana, 2000).
4. Amales Tripathi, Swadhinatar Mukh (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 1998), pp. 86, 185.
5. Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam, p. 259, n. 29.
6. Partha Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, Essays in Political Criticism (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 35. For a different view on this, see Joya Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–47 (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
7. Abul Mansur Ahmad, Amar Dekha Rajneetir Ponchas Bochhor (Dhaka: Khosroz Kitab Mahal, 1999), p. 196.
8. Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, India Wins Freedom (Complete Version) (Hyderabad: Orient Longman, 1988), p. 170.
9. Spoken to J.B. Kripalani, Congress president and husband of Sucheta, who played an outstanding role in arranging relief to the victims of the pogrom. Kripalani says he felt like hitting Burrows, but restrained himself. See D.P. Mishra, India’s March to Freedom (New Delhi: Har-Anand Publications, 2001), p. 566.
10. Dinesh Chandra Sinha, Noakhalir Mati o Manush (Kolkata: Gyan Prakashan, 1992), pp. 95–96.
11. Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 450.
12. Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Leaves from a Diary (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 226.
13. The St Bartholomew’s Day massacre was a targeted set of assassinations in France in 1572 of Protestant Huguenots by Catholics. Estimates of deaths in the massacre vary from 10,000 to 70,000.
14. Sinha, Noakhalir Mati o Manush, p. 122.
15. A custom prevailing in Hindu society at the time was that anyone who converted out of Hinduism, even if he was forced to do so, could come back to the fold by doing prayashchitta. This involved observing certain expensive rituals, such as yajna and the like. Return to Hinduism is today actively administered by several organizations, among them the Arya Samaj and the Vishva Hindu Parishad.
16. Ashok Dasgupta and Dinesh Chandra Sinha, The Great Calcutta Killings and the Noakhali Genocide (Kolkata: Tuhina Prakashani, 2013), pp. 247–49.
17. Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi, pp. 451, 454.
18. Ram Manohar Lohia, Guilty Men of India’s Partition (New Delhi: Rupa, 2009), p. 22.
19. Ibid., p. 23.
20. Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1976), p. 120.
1. R.C. Majumdar, The History and Culture of the Indian People, Vol. XI, Struggle for Freedom, general ed., (Mumbai: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1988), p. 606.
2. Benami means a system of ownership of property in India whereby the real owner is different from the ostensible owner (benamdar). The system was lawful in India at that time, but has now been abolished.
3. The only Indian member of the House of Lords then.
4. An outstanding historian.
5. Eminent philologist, later a national professor of humanities.
6. A prominent member of the Bengal Congress from the Marwari community.
7. A father figure among journalists in Bengal.
8. Prashanto Kumar Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 196.
9. Amrita Bazar Patrika, 23 April 1947.
10. Amales Tripathi, Swadhinatar Mukh (Kolkata: Ananda Publishers), pp. 86, 185; Bidyut Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam 1932–47 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2004), p. 259, n. 29; Partha Chatterjee, The Present History of West Bengal, Essays in Political Criticism (New Delhi, Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 35.
11. The acronym EBDO stood for Elected Bodies Disqualification Order, a promulgation by Field Marshal Ayub Khan in 1958 after he usurped power over Pakistan in a coup in 1958, clamped martial law on the country, and abolished all elected bodies and replaced them with military administrators.
1. Earl Attlee, Prime Minister of Britain when India got her freedom, had occasion to visit Calcutta in 1953, and stayed at the Raj Bhavan (Governor’s residence). P.B. Chakravartty, chief justice of the Calcutta High Court, was then the acting Governor. He asked Attlee, among other things, about the extent to which Gandhi’s Non-cooperation movement and Quit India movement had been instrumental in ending British rule. Attlee is said to have replied, with his pipe clenched between his teeth, ‘m-i-n-i-m-a-l’. It is widely held that the formation of the INA and the Naval Mutiny of 1946, which destroyed British confidence in the loyalty of their Indian troops, were what finally caused them to pack their bags and go. Gandhi’s movement was certainly one of the factors, however ‘minimal’.
2. Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 70.
3. The RSS, founded in 1925 by Dr K.B. Hedgewar and nurtured to its great strength by his successor M.S. Golwalkar, is a regimented organization admired and maligned with equal intensity, depending on which side of the ‘secular’ divide one is on. Its declared objective is to unify and organize Hindus irrespective of their caste or language, and build men of character (manushya-nirman, as they themselves describe it). The central government had banned it three times—in 1948, following Gandhi’s assassination, in 1975 during Indira Gandhi’s infamous Emergency and in 1992, following the demolition of the disputed shrine at Ayodhya. Each time the government has found the ban unjustified and has been forced to withdraw the same. A common mistake is to confuse it with the Hindu Mahasabha; the two are organizationally unconnected.
4. Of course the ordnance factories were there, but they were defence-oriented and purely government-run, and Sindri Fertilizer and subsequent industries were envisaged to be differently constituted in order to free them of bureaucratic red tape. It is here that Dr Mookerjee showed considerable innovation. However, subsequent experience showed that red tape had returned by the back door to haunt these industries.
5. Constituent Assembly Debates, Book No. 4 (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, Reprinted 2014), p. 1391.
1. It is important to understand that this was not a riot, but a pogrom, a one-sided looting, raping and killing spree. The word ‘pogrom’, assimilated from Russian into English, originally meant the organized massacre of Jews, as was practised in Russia and parts of Eastern Europe, and is now applied to any such massacre.
2. Michael Brecher in Nehru: A Political Biography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2011), pp. 427–29, 429n, writes: ‘Statistics on the Bengal migration of 1950 must be viewed with caution, for both parties were anxious to place the responsibility on their neighbour . . . Here seemed to be an ideal opportunity to “avenge the wrong” of 1947. Within the central cabinet this extremist view had powerful support, not only from self-proclaimed communalists like Dr S.P. Mookerjee, but also from the Sardar . . . Within a few months [of the Pact] the flood of refugees subsided and many returned to their homes.’ Later in a note: ‘Dr Mookerjee was the most forceful spokesman for Hindu communalism in recent Indian politics . . . While on one of his visits to Kashmir in 1954 he was taken seriously ill and died before he could be brought to Delhi [emphasis added in both].’ The gross factual inaccuracy, not to speak of bias, is palpable and is further brought home by incidents like the Santahar massacre and similar incidents. For a detailed treatment of the situation in East Bengal post Delhi Pact, the reader is referred to the author’s My People, Uprooted: The Exodus of Hindus from East Pakistan and Bangladesh (New Delhi: Synergy Books India, 2016), pp. 255–67.
3. Prabhas Chandra Lahiri, Pak-Bharater Ruprekha (Chakdaha [Distt Nadia, West Bengal]: Shyama Prakashani), p. 202; Sukharanjan Sengupta, Bongosonghar Ebong (Kolkata: Naya Udyog, 2002), p. 149; Sandip Banerjee, Deshbhag, Deshtyag (Kolkata: Anushtup, 1994), p. 66; Roy, My People, Uprooted, p. 222.
4. Eyewitness interviews, Ranjit Kar, 1999; Shyamalesh Das, 1999; Ramendra Lal Basu, 1998; Dinesh Chandra Sinha, Roktoronjito Dhaka-Barisal Ebong (Kolkata: Codex, 2012); Roy, My People, Uprooted, p. 222; Sukharanjan Sengupta, Bongosonghar Ebong (Kolkata: Naya Udyog, 2002), p. 153.
5. A.J. Kamra, The Prolonged Partition and Its Pogroms (New Delhi: Voice of India, 2000), p. 63; Roy, My People, Uprooted, p. 218.
6. This is adequately explained in the seminal work by Jayanta Kumar Ray, Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan (Simla: Institute of Advanced Studies, 1968), pp. 25–28, 32, 151. Also see Prashanto Kumar Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Foundation Books/Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 252; Lahiri, Pak-Bharater Ruprekha, p. 148.
7. Jawaharlal Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches Volume 2 (New Delhi: Publications Division, 1963), p. 135.
8. Ibid.
9. The year of publication of his seminal work Democracy and Nationalism on Trial: A Study of East Pakistan.
11. A scheduled caste leader from Barisal in East Bengal, Jogendra Nath Mandal (1906–56) had joined the Muslim League, and had been used by the party to whitewash their misdeeds as to the persecution of Hindus. However, the 1950 pogrom, when no less than 10,000 Hindus had been killed in his own district of Barisal, proved to be too much even for him. He had drawn Liaquat Ali’s attention to it, whereupon Liaquat first said he was exaggerating and then threatened to throw him in jail. Mandal subsequently escaped to West Bengal and sent his resignation from there.
12. Nehru, Jawaharlal Nehru’s Speeches Volume 2, pp. 137, 142.
13. Ibid., p. 144.
14. Sukharanjan Sengupta, ‘Ponchasher Danga: Shyamaprasad Keno Podotyag Korechhilen’, in Shotoborsher Aloy Syama Prasad (Kolkata: Srishti Prakashan, 2002), p. 119; Sengupta, Bongosonghar Ebong, p. 162.
15. Louis Fischer, The Life of Mahatma Gandhi (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 401.
16. Binoy Mukhopadhyay (1909–2003) is in fact quite well known in contemporary Bengali literature by his pseudonym Jajabor (meaning ‘nomad’ in Bengali). As press adviser he had access to information relating to all the goings-on in official circles during the tumultuous years immediately preceding and following the independence of the country. As such all his observations are authentic and very valuable. His interview appeared in the 24 April 1993 issue of Desh, an ABP publication.
17. Binoy Mukhopadhyay (Jajabor), Interview in Bengali fortnightly Desh to Niladri Chaki, 24 April 1993, pp. 51–66.
18. Durga Das, India from Curzon to Nehru and After (New Delhi: Rupa, 2009), p. 384.
19. Pandit Lakshmi Kanta Maitra (1895–1953) was a Congress member of the Central Legislative Assembly from 1934 onwards, a member of the Constituent Assembly and a follower of Patel, but had enormous admiration for Syama Prasad Mookerjee. His relation with Nehru, though, was always lukewarm. He used to say that Syama Prasad was a man with a heart like an ocean. He was so fond of the man that struck by grief he literally fell ill at the sight of Syama Prasad’s dead body in Calcutta, and died within a month. However, his son Kashi Kanta Maitra, a minister (1972–77) in the West Bengal government and an advocate, was unable to confirm if he had a discussion with Syama Prasad before his speech, though he said that it was fairly probable.
20. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, Volume I to IV, 1950, 17 March, p. 1704.
21. Ibid., p. 1726.
22. Ibid., p. 1727.
23. Ibid., p. 1741.
24. This daily, of the Anandabazar Patrika group of Calcutta, has since ceased publication.
25. Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics, p. 204.
26. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, Volume I to IV, 1950, 19 April, pp. 3017–22; Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library), Instalment 1(c), Sl. No. 3, pp. 1–13; Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), pp. 103, 107–13; Roy, My People, Uprooted, pp. 493–503.
27. Binoy Mukhopadhyay (Jajabor), Interview in Bengali fortnightly Desh to Niladri Chaki, 24 April 1993, pp. 51–66.
28. There has been such a concerted effort to obfuscate the exodus of Hindus from East Bengal that no official statistics are available on this movement in which people in excess of one crore (10 million) were displaced, some 50,000 murdered, countless women brutalized or kidnapped and thousands forcibly converted. However, this author has tried to collate statistics available from census and other data in order to extract approximate figures. See Roy, My People, Uprooted, pp. 240–43, 465–69.
1. Syama Prasad Mookerjee Papers (New Delhi: Nehru Memorial Museum and Library), Instalment 1(c), Sl. No. 4, pp. 1–13; Prashanto Kumar Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 270.
2. Anil Chandra Banerjee, A Phase in the Life of Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, 1937–46 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2000), pp. 64–65.
3. Madhya Bharat (different from present-day Madhya Pradesh) was an erstwhile Part ‘B’ state consisting of several former princely states such as Bhopal, Indore and Gwalior. The Constitution in 1950 created four kinds of states––Part ‘A’ states consisting of former provinces of British India, such as West Bengal, Bombay, or UP; Part ‘B’ states which were either single former princely states, such as Hyderabad or Mysore, or were a combination of such states, such as Rajasthan or Madhya Bharat; Part ‘C’ states which were small princely states such as Ajmer or Coorg; and Part ‘D’ states, small centrally administered units such as Andaman and Nicobar Islands. All these distinctions were abolished by the States Reorganization of 1957.
4. Pracharaks in the RSS are full-timers (all male) who devote themselves to RSS work, do not marry and are taken care of by the organization. However, some of them do go back home after a few years and marry. The topmost posts in the organization are manned by people from among those who stay on for their lives.
5. The Hindi weekly Panchjanya was launched in Lucknow under the auspices of the Rashtra Dharma Prakashan on Makara Sankranti day, 14 January 1948, and is, to use the popular line, still going strong. The first editor was Atal Bihari Vajpayee, but it was Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya who took upon himself the role of an editor, proofreader, compositor, binder and printer. The article in question appeared in the 26 June 1956 issue of the weekly.
6. Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics, p. 301.
7. Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 109.
8. Ibid., p. 110.
9. The Bengali word for ‘lamp’, the symbol of the new party. Dr Mookerjee, in spite of his advocacy of Hindi, was weak in the language which is why he did not use its Hindi word ‘deepak’.
10. In front of Gurdwara Sis Ganj, in Old Delhi. The grounds have shrunk considerably now in making way for parking lots and other facilities.
11. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 110.
1. Interview of Balraj Madhok, New Delhi, 2009. Also see Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 112.
2. For an exposé of the depths to which some of these so-called ‘historians’ had descended to curry favour with the ruling elite of India, read Arun Shourie’s Eminent Historians: Their Technology, Their Line, Their Fraud mentioned in the Bibliography.
3. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 118.
4. The author has heard this from his father who was a voter in south Kolkata in 1952. The author, incidentally, has lived almost all his life in south Kolkata.
5. Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1990), p. 24.
6. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 28 March 1951, pp. 5273–80.
7. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 17 September 1951, pp. 2705–24; Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series, pp. 82–98.
8. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 132.
9. Madhok has also remarked, ‘Nehru had developed a Fascist tendency to intolerance and also an exaggerated sense of self-righteousness. This tendency in him had become very marked since the death of Sardar Patel.’ See ibid., p. 129.
10. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 133.
11. Ibid., p. 135.
12. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, Vol. 6, 18 December 1952, pp. 2657–73.
13. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 9–22 July and 30 July–2 August 1952, pp. 3445–4422, 5200–5764.
14. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 2 August 1952, p. 5210; Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 136.
15. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 139.
16. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 7 August 1952, pp. 5885–99; Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series, pp. 109–23.
1. Interview with Madhok, New Delhi, 28 August 2008.
2. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 7 August 1952, pp. 5885–99; Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee, Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series (New Delhi: Lok Sabha Secretariat, 1990), pp. 109–23 at p. 114; Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of Dr. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 150.
3. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 150.
4. Mehr Chand Mahajan was subsequently appointed as a judge of the newly formed Supreme Court and rose to become the third Chief Justice of India.
5. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 159.
6. Ibid., p. 146.
7. Satyagraha literally means ‘quest for truth’, and had been popularized by Gandhi as a non-violent means of agitation. It encompasses non-violent dharna (sit-in), processions, courting arrest, demonstrations, etc. Dr Mookerjee, as a constitutional politician, was generally opposed to these means, except as a last resort.
8. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, pp. 151–52.
9. Ibid., p. 154.
10. Ibid., p. 154; Prashanto Kumar Chatterji, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee and Indian Politics (New Delhi: Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 325.
11. The Constitution provided for Part B states which were singly Indian states before (e.g. Hyderabad, Mysore) or were a collection of substantial Indian states (e.g. Rajasthan, Saurashtra). The nominal head of the governments of these states were designated as Rajpramukh, and this post was occupied by the former ruler of the state (e.g. The Nizam, in the case of Hyderabad) in the first category of Part B states and the former ruler of one of the important states in the second category (e.g. The Maharaja of Jaipur, in the case of Rajasthan). In contrast, the head of a Part A state (a state of erstwhile British India) was designated as Rajyapal or Governor. All these distinctions were abolished after the States Reorganization of 1957. Jammu and Kashmir, however, although earlier an Indian state, had no Rajpramukh, but the son of the former ruler was made Sadr-i-Riyasat.
12. Gerrymandering is a political term of American origin, and means cutting up electoral districts or constituencies in an odd manner to give unfair advantage to a particular political party.
13. Parliamentary Debates, Part II, 7 August 1952, pp. 5885–99; Mookerjee, Eminent Parliamentarians Monograph Series, pp. 109–23 at p. 110.
14. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 160.
15. Ibid., p. 158.
16. Ibid., p. 160.
17. Reena Bhaduri, ed., Kashmir Issue: Correspondence, Speeches and Reports, 1947–53 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2003), p. 90; ibid., p. 205.
18. B.N. Mullick, My Years with Nehru: Kashmir (New York: Allied Publishers, 1971), p. 110.
19. This had also proved contemporaneously true in respect of Potti Sreeramulu’s agitation for a separate Telugu-speaking state where he had capitulated only after Sreeramulu died following his fast, and widespread violence broke out.
20. Dr Mookerjee, a staunch supporter of Hindi as he was, had problems with the language as many Bengalis do, and could never get the accent and particularly the gender right. However, he got around the problem of vocabulary by following Pandit Mauli Chandra Sharma’s advice who told him to use chaste (tatsama, or same as Sanskrit) Bengali words and expressions whenever he could not remember an appropriate Hindi word or expression. He did it, and was perfectly understood by Hindi-speaking audiences.
21. Reena Bhaduri, ed., Kashmir Issue, pp. 200–01; Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 195.
22. Bhaduri, ed., Kashmir Issue, pp. 94–95.
23. After the death of Gandhi, Sardar Patel and finally Dr Mookerjee there was no one left in or out of the Parliament to speak up to Nehru. Some of his cabinet colleagues must have foreseen that his Industrial Policy Resolution of 1956 would usher in the notorious Licence-Permit Raj in India; they also must have had reservations about his neglect of agriculture and the removal of illiteracy and his emphasis on heavy industries, blindly copying the Soviet model; and also his Hindi-Chini bhai bhai in spite of China’s cartographical aggression on India. There is, however, no such reservation on record. Even Maulana Azad, pretty much his equal, willed that the parts of his autobiography, India Wins Freedom, critical of Nehru should be published only thirty years after Azad’s death.
24. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 222.
1. Balraj Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr: A Biography of r. Shyama Prasad Mookerji (Mumbai: Jaico Publishing House, 1969), p. 226.
2. Walter Johnson at the time was on the faculty of Chicago University and was the co-chairman of the national committee for (Adlai) Stevenson for President. After Stevenson’s defeat to Dwight D. Eisenhower, Johnson accompanied Stevenson on his world tour in 1953.
3. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 228.
4. A popular newsmagazine of India belonging to the Times of India group. It ceased publication in 1993.
5. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, pp. 229–30.
6. Order dated 11 May 1953 by Prithvinandan Singh, inspector-general of police, Jammu and Kashmir, reproduced in Uma Prasad Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo (Kolkata: Mitra & Ghosh), p. 230.
7. Interview with Madhok, New Delhi, 28 August 2008.
8. Madhok, Portrait of a Martyr, p. 241; Interview with Madhok, New Delhi, 28 August 2008.
9. Balraj Madhok’s account in his Portrait of a Martyr is supplemented by my interview of him on 28 August 2008 in New Delhi. Madhok got it from Guru Datt Vaid, Tek Chand and U.M. Trivedi. This is technically hearsay, but has to be given due importance as none of the eyewitnesses were available for interview.
10. Interview of Madhok, ibid.
11. Interview of the late Sabita Banerjee, Syama Prasad’s elder daughter, 24 April 2010, at her residence at Koregaon Park, Pune.
12. Amrita Bazar Patrika (English) and Jugantor (Bengali) were nationalist daily newspapers of Kolkata owned by the Ghosh family of Bagbazar, Calcutta. The former was published simultaneously from Calcutta and Allahabad and played a significant role in assisting Dr Mookerjee in his struggle for West Bengal (see Chapter 9). The house itself has ceased to exist and the dailies have discontinued publication.
13. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, ‘Syama Prasad—A Man of Unshakeable Purpose’, in Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee in the Eyes of his Contemporaries, ed. Nikhilesh Guha (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2016), pp. 89–90.
14. Sukharanjan Sengupta, Bhanga Pather Ranga Dhulay (Kolkata: Punashcha, 2010), p. 88.
15. Reena Bhaduri, ed., Kashmir Issue: Correspondence, Speeches and Reports, 1947–53 (Kolkata: Asutosh Mookerjee Memorial Institute, 2003), pp. 293–311 at p. 303.
16. Manoj Das Gupta, Dr Syama Prasad Mookerjee: A Pure and Manly Life (Pondicherry/Kolkata: Sri Aurobindo Ashram Trust/New House), p. 53.
17. Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo, pp. 214–19.
18. Ibid.
19. Durga Das, India from Curzon to Nehru and After (New Delhi: Rupa, 2009), p. 373.
20. Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo, pp. 214–19.
21. Karan Singh, Autobiography (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2003).
22. Bhaduri, ed., Kashmir Issue, pp. 293–311 at pp. 298–99.
23. Mookerjee, ed., Syamaprasader Diary o Mrityu Prosongo, pp. 198–222.