Gandhi's struggle in Noakhali

In the long, tumultuous history of India's path to independence, some episodes stand out for the sheer intensity of human suffering they reveal.

- BY SANGRAM DATTA

One such chapter is the Noakhali riots of 1946, a tragedy that exposed the raw fault lines between communities in Bengal on the eve of Partition. Nearly three-quarters of a century later, the incident continues to attract international attention. On 2 October 2019, BBC News Bangla revisited this dark chapter in a report titled “Gandhi in Noakhali: The Bloody Chapter of a Communal Massacre”, highlighting the horrors of the time and Gandhi's courageous intervention. By mid-1946, undivided Bengal was a tinderbox.

The Great Calcutta Killings of 16 August 1946 had claimed nearly 4,000 lives, leaving over 100,000 homeless, and the aftershocks rippled across eastern India. Suspicion and animosity between Hindus and Muslims spread like wildfire, and communal distrust became inseparable from political discourse. In Noakhali, a coastal district in what is now Bangladesh, tensions erupted on 10 October 1946 during the festival of Kojagori Lakshmi Puja. A rumour concerning Sadhu Triyambakananda, a visiting Hindu monk, sparked violent backlash. The monk, falsely accused of claiming he would please the goddess with the blood of Muslims rather than goats, became the symbolic pretext for a massacre that was already waiting to happen in a region rife with resentment. Markets were looted, homes torched, and landlords targeted. Rajendralal Chowdhury, a prominent zamindar, was killed when his estate was attacked. Chittaranjan Ray Chowdhury, another landlord, reportedly killed his family before taking his own life under siege.