'Duty does not permit repentance - The butchers of Calcutta'
Dr. Jai Maharaj
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Duty does not permit repentance -- The butchers of Calcutta
By Andrew Whitehead
The Indian Express
http://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970701/18250453.html
Saturday, December 21, 2002
Gopal 'Patha' Mukherjee, Gopal the Goat, looks an
unlikely retired gang leader. He is positively beatific,
with his thick, black-rimmed spectacles, long white
beard, and tidy wisp of grey hair tied up on top of his
head, sardar-style.
Yet, half a century ago, he was among the most feared of
Calcutta's musclemen, with 800 boys at his command. He
was an emperor and they were his army. Gopal Patha he got
the name because his family ran a meat shop on College
Street was, at the time of partition, a protector of his
community. His idea of keeping the peace was killing the
other side.
''He was very ferocious,'' recalls S. K. Bhattacharjee, a
sub-inspector in the Lalbazar police headquarters at the
time of the Great Calcutta Killing in August 1946.
''Gopal Patha looked like a gentleman. He was a criminal,
but he was very helpful to the poor. During the riots, he
came out to rescue Hindus.''
Then as now, gang leaders needed political patrons, and
politicians were keen to have friends in low places.
Gopal Patha, sitting in his office near Calcutta's
Wellington Square, says he was close to the Congress
Chief, B. C. Roy though he insists this was a personal
friendship more than a political allegiance.
Whatever the inspiration, when Direct Action Day
unleashed communal rioting in Calcutta, Gopal Patha
assembled his force. ''It was a very critical time for
the country,'' he asserts. "We thought if the whole area
became Pakistan, there would be more torture and
repression. So I called all my boys together and said it
was time to retaliate. If you come to know that one
murder has taken place, you commit 10 murders. That was
the order to my boys.''
The words are uttered so softly, it takes a while for
their import to sink in. Calcutta was in flames and Gopal
Patha, in effect, took the opportunity to douse the city
in kerosene. ''It was basically duty,'' he insists. ''I
had to help those in distress.''
Today, his modest office is grandly titled the National
Relief Centre for Destitutes. Apparently, a charity
clinic occasionally operates from there. On the walls are
black-and-white portraits of a pantheon of Bengali
heroes, the garlands greying with dust and decay. And
behind the door, sufficiently lifelike to unnerve the
unwary, is a life-size model of Netaji, dressed in INA
uniform, right down to the spit-and-polish military
boots.
''People used all sorts of weapons,'' says Gopal Patha,
relishing the opportunity to reminisce. ''They had small
knives, big choppers, sticks, rods, guns, and pistols. I
had two American pistols. We got some weapons during the
1942 movement. Then during the Second World War, the
American army, the Negroes, were in Calcutta. If you gave
them Rs 250 or a bottle of whiskey, they would give you a
pistol and a hundred cartridges. That way we secured all
these weapons, and we used them during the troubles.''
He made plenty of enemies. ''We came to know a Hindu
called Gopal Patha,'' recalls former Muslim Leaguer G. G.
Ajmiri. ''He used to catch hold of Muslims and slaughter
them.'' Ajmiri was a Muslim strongman, a leader of the
League's student wing in Calcutta along with Mujibur
Rahman (''He was not that important then.'') and a member
of the Muslim National Guard.
Ajmiri, who appears to have been loyal in turn to
Britain, to Pakistan (he served in its army) and now to
Bangladesh, lives in Dhaka, where he delights in telling
tales of his prowess. ''They used to call me 'brave';
'strongarm'. I never used a shotgun or sword. But I was a
good boxer. And sometimes I took the bamboo sticks out of
their hands and beat them with those.''
''One day,'' says Ajmiri, warming to his theme,
''somebody said: Gopal Patha has grabbed four Muslims and
slaughtered them. Immediately, we rushed there. Gopal
Patha looked at me and said: 'Oh, this man has come
again.' So I said, 'Yes. Why are you killing people just
because they are Muslims?' He said to me: 'You go, we
won't kill anybody now.'''
Patha ripostes that his boys were always selective. ''We
fought and killed our attackers. But why should we kill
an ordinary rickshaw-wallah or hawker?"For every first
division gang leader like Gopal the Goat, there was a
cluster of lesser figures, people like Jugal Chandra
Ghosh, also now in his eighties. Still a big bear of a
man, he was in 1946 a worker with the Congress Party's
trade union wing. But that wasn't the source of his
street power.
''I had a club, an akhara,'' he says. ''I was a wrestler,
and I trained my boys, and they carried out my
instructions. There was this Congress party leader. He
took me round Calcutta in his jeep. I saw many dead
bodies, Hindu dead bodies. I told him: 'Yes, there will
be retaliation.'''
''I went round the saw mills and factories. I set an
amount sometimes Rs 1,000, sometimes Rs 5,000. They paid
up. Then I declared: for one murder, you get Rs 10, for a
half-murder, Rs 5. That's how we got started.''
A year after the Killing, Gandhi came to a still-
smouldering city and appealed for a surrender of arms.
The journalist Sailen Chatterjee witnessed the scene.
''People came with their weapons and placed them at the
feet of Gandhiji. Shabbily-dressed people came with
swords, daggers and country-made guns. Even Mountbatten
said this was the miracle of Calcutta. Gandhi's
miracle.''
Ghosh was among those who surrendered their arms. It was
a remarkable conversion, and Ghosh remains a committed
Gandhian. In the aftermath of Ayodhya, he worked hard to
prevent communal unrest in his mixed area of Calcutta.
But there were limits to the miracle. Some strongmen,
those who had fanned the flames so diligently over the
previous year, took an intransigent line. ''Gandhi called
me twice,'' Gopal Patha says. ''I didn't go. The third
time, some local Congress leaders told me that I should
at least deposit some of my arms.''
''I went there. I saw people coming and depositing
weapons which were of no use to anyone out-of-order
pistols, that sort of thing. Then Gandhi's secretary said
to me: 'Gopal, why don't you surrender your arms to
Gandhiji?' I replied, 'With these arms I saved the women
of my area, I saved the people. I will not surrender
them''.
With a steely glint in his eye, the sort which
distinguishes the goonda from the loudmouth muscleman,
Gopal Patha continued: ''Where was Gandhiji, I said,
during the Great Calcutta Killing? Where was he then?
Even if I've used a nail to kill someone, I won't
surrender even that nail.''His sober determination
underlines one of the tragedies of Partition fifty years
on, so many of those who killed still have no sense of
regret.
Source - http://expressindia.com/ie/daily/19970701/18250453.html
End of forwarded message
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
Panchaang for 20 Mrgasheer 5103, Monday, December 23, 2002:
Chitrabhanu Nama Samvatsare Uttarayane Moksha Ritau
Dhanush Mase Krishna Pakshe Indu Vasara Yuktayam
Ashlesha-Magha Nakshatra Vishakumbha Yoga
Balava-Kaulava Karana Chaturthi-Panchami Yam Tithau
Hindu Holocaust Museum
http://www.mantra.com/holocaust
Hindu life, principles, spirituality and philosophy
http://www.hindu.org
http://www.hindunet.org
The truth about Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Not for commercial use. Solely to be fairly used for the educational
purposes of research and open discussion. The contents of this post
may not have been authored by, and do not necessarily represent the
opinion of the poster. The contents are protected by copyright law
and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
You e-mail will likely not be considered or answered if it does not
contain your full name, current e-mail and postal addresses, and voice
telephone number.
Azim Fahmi
has all lies written about the Prophet. Again, if you want to speak
the truth speak it but do not display your ill-intent with your
ignorance filled verbiage that make little or no sense.
use...@mantra.com (Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote in message news:<Muslim-terroris...@news.mantra.com>...
Dr. Jai Maharaj
azim_...@msn.com (Azim Fahmi) posted:
> I went to this website www.manra.com/holocaust. This propaganda site
> has all lies written about the Prophet. Again, if you want to speak
> the truth speak it but do not display your ill-intent with your
> ignorance filled verbiage that make little or no sense.
What exactly did you find at the web site
that is not true about Muslims and Islam?
Facts about terrorist Islam and Muslims
http://www.flex.com/~jai/satyamevajayate
Jai Maharaj
http://www.mantra.com/jai
Om Shanti
> Dr. Jai Maharaj wrote in message
Mirza Ghalib
of August, 1946 when the troubles had already subsided, thanks to
people like Partha Mukherjee. Could be he was waiting for just
that before making a move out of the safety of Delhi.
Predictably, his cronies declared that he had reestablished 'peace'
in Calcutta. In reality he did nothing more than hold a few 'prayer'
meeting and perhaps also a short fast, which he was adept at.
use...@mantra.com (Dr. Jai Maharaj) wrote in message news:<Muslim-terroris...@news.mantra.com>...
> Facts about terrorist Islam and Muslims