A cleansing effect (2/3)

August 14, 2023

The British were leaving India as friends; Gandhi’s nonviolent war of independence had succeeded. But as the fateful day, August 15, 1947, approached, religious tensions were high. While passing through Kolkata, Gandhi agreed to stay and help keep the peace, if Shaheed Suhrawardy joined him.

Gandhi arrived at the house they would share on the evening of August 13. It was a Muslim neighborhood, but a gang of Hindu youths was waiting for him. “Why have you come here?” they challenged him. They blamed him for doing nothing on Direct Action Day the previous year, when the Muslims had initiated violence. Now that the Muslims, who made up less than a quarter of the city’s population, were concerned about their own safety, they saw Gandhi come running. “We don’t want you here,” they told him.

The house still smelled of disinfectant, so hastily had it been prepared for Gandhi’s arrival. He invited the gang to send representatives to talk with him, and won them over. (In 1966, Martin Luther King Jr. would use a similar strategy in Chicago, inviting members of the Vice Lords to visit his ghetto apartment and discuss nonviolence.)

On August 14, Shaheed Suhrawardy arrived, having given careful consideration to Gandhi’s offer and example. He was a large man, out of his element, and stayed inside during Gandhi’s nightly prayer meeting ‘to avoid being the slightest cause of irritation.’ Eventually, Gandhi invited him out, vouching for his sincerity to the ‘packed audience.’

There were angry shouts from the crowd, and even some thrown rocks. Was he responsible for the riots on Direct Action Day? Suhrawardy demurred, but when asked a third time, he boomed out, “Yes, I was responsible!” Gandhi saw this as ‘the turning point,’ because of ‘the cleansing effect.’

That night, along with others in the city and across the country, Gandhi and Suhrawardy began their fast for peace. What would India’s reaction to independence and partition at midnight be? It was ‘the day of their trial,’ and the new nation awaited the verdict.

What’s something you’d like to avoid taking responsibility for?