An angry encounter
August 31, 2024
In 1947, two weeks after the British partition, India and Pakistan were still determining what relationships on the subcontinent would look like for generations. By virtue of their religion, an estimated 14 million people found their ancestral homes on the wrong side of the new boundaries, and a mass migration was underway. Processions of refugees were as long as 50 miles—one such column was observed (by plane) to have 800,000 people in it.1
There were riots in the Punjab province, where the Jallianwala Bagh massacre had taken place. (This was with 55,000 troops on the ground there to enforce peace.) In West Bengal, the Maine-sized province where Gandhi was staying in Kolkata, peace was maintained voluntarily. Certain elements of the Hindu-majority city were looking for an excuse to break it, including the militant Hindu Mahasabha, of which Gandhi’s future assassin was a current member.
On Sunday evening, August 31, 1947, members of the Mahasabha brought a bandaged man to the Muslim neighborhood where Gandhi was staying. It was 10pm, and Gandhi had gone to bed, only to be awoken by loud shouting and the smashing of windows as they broke into the home. The mob claimed the man had been stabbed by Muslims, proof that the peace was already broken. (An investigation the next day revealed zero stab wounds; the blood was the result of a fall.)
Through an interpreter, Gandhi pleaded with the invaders, even shouting at them. (This is doubly significant because he’d been observing his weekly day of silence—a 24-hour fast from speaking—but was willing to break it under exceptional circumstances.) The response from the crowd included a brick thrown at him, which missed but hit a nearby companion. Finally, the Chief of Police arrived and was able to disperse the crowd.
The encounter left Gandhi distraught. “I feel totally lost,” he confessed in a letter to his longtime friend and new Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Patel.2 The city’s peace had been genuine, and he could not understand why some factions seemed determined to break it and substitute lynch law.
The unease simmered overnight, and a dramatic act of violence the following day provoked him into action.
Sardar Patel is the subject of the world’s largest statue for his work uniting India’s hundreds of princely states during partition. Even excluding its 190-foot pedestal, it’s taller than the Washington Monument! If you were asked to design a grand statue, who or what would you use as a model?
Witness to Life and Freedom: Margaret Bourke-White in India and Pakistan (2010) p. 28
Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (Letter to Vallabhbhai Patel, September 1, 1947) p. 45,928