Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947

[Bharatvarsh]

<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'In the Thund'rous Air'
(June-July)

*** the background of the 1946 Calcutta Riot ***

Sir Francis Tuker

Courtesy: While Memory Serves
(London: Cassell, 1950), pp. 137-151



Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees
With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees
In the thund'rous air

Robert Bridges

The glorious cassias, pale varied pink as chiffon dancing frocks, tore their silken purses and strewed their treasure over our Calcutta gardens.

So far, watchfully, police and Army had warded off grave communal conflict, but all knew the fatal thing was drawing ever nearer. We in the Army prayed that it might not enter the Punjab, the model province of India, from which so high a proportion of our fighting men was recruited. So long as it 'was kept out of that province our British officers could hold the Army together. With that proviso, no matter how widespread might be a communal outbreak in Eastern Command, we could deal with it. But strife in the Punjab would break up our mixed battalions of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, for it would surge about their very homes in riot, loot, fire and murder. It came in the end, yet the Army stood firm against it in the most wonderful way for many months. The traditional spirit of impartiality, the old spirit of pride in their regiment, held them together for longer than any could have deemed possible. I believe that this is the greatest achievement of the British in India. Political pressure, racial pressure, tribal pressure, communal pressure-all had been resisted by the Indian Army while the British officer, new and old, never faltered in his faith in his men or in his courage to lead them. Yet how simple it would have been for the soldiers to turn against those few officers.

With the sorry deterioration of that great force, the Indian Police, it was obvious that in any grave disturbances we would find the Army only too quickly committed to perform the duties of police. We disliked this. No army is equipped by nature or training to perform this role. For them it is a b@st@rd role. Much has been spoken of Imperial policing; 1 in fact a book has been written on it. We should recollect that to give such duties to an army is to misuse that army. Imperial policing should be done by those who are adapted to its requirements; such people as the Assam Rifles, the Frontier Militias, the Eastern Frontier Rifles and so on-quasi-military bodies, well armed and yet trained and authorised for the most exacting policing duties. An army can only exert its power when it has an enemy and when it is permitted to use its weapons to the full, and freely, against that enemy. To tie it about with restrictions and still to force it to operate is to ruin it for war. This happened to our British Army in the inter-war years when it was neither equipped nor trained for war. To a lesser extent, due chiefly to its exclusive attention to the western frontier of India, this also happened to the Indian Army.

We foresaw this misuse of the Army and, while we strove to put off the day of its beginning, we did what we could to prepare ourselves for it. From the 15th August 1947 the Indian Army was no more than a police force, ill adapted to the work, still restricted in the use of its weapons and without an enemy at whom to strike. For these reasons the Sikhs were enabled, with inferior arms, to conquer the Eastern Punjab and to spread their influence into parts of the United Provinces.

It seems to soldiers that the British are no longer of the same quality as of old for they do not grasp the nettle firmly in their hands. Perhaps it is because it has become so easy to refer affairs to others at a distance who are really not sufficiently informed to make far-sighted and well-judged decisions: perhaps it is that they just lack faith in themselves.

In visualising Pakistan we did not expect to see either Calcutta torn out of Muslim Bengal or the Punjab divided in half. The Punjab was, in so far as any province could be, an economic unit and a well administered one. Almost the same words can be applied to Bengal but without the same stress on its administration. Western democracy could not possibly suit this medieval India. At the best her provinces must be governed by oligarchies. That would mean government by one party and therefore by repression, for that party could not afford to allow its opponents into power for a long time for fear of their reprisals. The parties now were Muslim League and Congress. It was unlikely, with the rising tide of communal feeling, that any sort of coalition could last in those provinces. It therefore seemed that the right course was to denude other provinces of their British I.C.S. and police officials and perhaps army officers, and to concentrate them on those two provinces so as to keep the peace while the oligarchic parties, the Muslim League in these cases, were finding their feet and taking charge. The Sikhs would have been kept within their former province and, if they chose to rise in revolt, would have had one master and a stern one, with whom to deal. It was probable that they would not therefore rise. The Punjab being to us the crucial province and the Sikh problem its crucial problem, it was very plain that the safety of India depended on not letting the Sikhs take the bit between their teeth.

Here again it stood out that the Army must be divided into its classes in order to dispose it suitably for our aims to be put into practice.

From the views here expressed we did not waver during the coming months. .

It may seem strange to a military reader that soldiers should have so immersed themselves in political considerations that they formed such definite ideas of their own on the manner of handing over government to Indians. The reasons are not far to seek. Firstly, we had to keep a very watchful eye on the Punjab; secondly, with the failing administration and the failing police, we might at any moment be forced to take charge and so we had to have clear before us in our own minds the object to which we would then devote ourselves. Further, whatever the Indian Press might say about 'Asylum', however much timidity they might read into its plans, it was a

fact that even at this time the habit of violence and hatred which political parties had so carefully incubated for so many years might very easily have generated a violent outbreak against Europeans, particularly in Bengal and Bihar where the population was the most volcanic and unbalanced. We had, therefore, to look a long way ahead and to keep our fingers on India's political pulse.

The communal quarrel was the one to which all eyes were turned. On the 10th July we nearly had a big flare-up in Calcutta. Some passengers on a tram had objected to the slowness of the service and assaulted the driver. For this, the  tramwaymen refused to work that afternoon, thus suspending the tram service. This introduced a nervy atmosphere. Later in the day a Muslim boy was struck by a football kicked by a Hindu youth and a fracas at once developed in which several people were injured.

Later in the week a ten-ton lorry knocked down a child, producing another small communal riot. With the Viceroy as intermediary the two great parties were haggling and protesting, with, it seemed to us, little intention of making any real headway towards a suitable scheme for governing India by Indians. On the 22nd July Lord Wavell issued a proposal to them to form an Interim Government to look after the Country's affairs until such time as it became possible to progress by agreement towards something more permanent. This proved to be the spark which fired the charge in Bengal and India. It was soon apparent that the Muslim League would not accept the proportion of representation in this government offered to them by the Viceroy. I will not pursue the matter here for I am concerned with those things which affected the Army rather than with the negotiations of our patient Viceroy in his further endeavours to find common ground on which Hindus and Muslims could meet to govern their country.

Up to the end of July, while irritations became more and more acute, it seemed on the surface that whatever was likely to happen would not be much deadlier than the February rioting. Nevertheless, since the source of emotion was deep and broad, we ordered two Gurkha regiments into Calcutta from Assam and North Bengal. It was good that we did so. These would bring our Calcutta garrison up to four British battalions and one artillery regiment and five Gurkha and Indian battalions.

In Bihar there was a small riot which the police put down by using their rifles. Then the Congress Party elected to proclaim the 9th August, the anniversary of the 'Quit India' resolution of 1942, as a day for demonstration and processions. The Muslim League was not to be outdone, so Mr. Jinnah, while rather hazy as to his real intention, announced that 16th August was to be 'Direct Action Day'. It seemed that this really meant that since the Muslims could not get their Pakistan by negotiation, they were to get it by direct and forceful action. Most Muslims, the more simple and vigorous, certainly read that meaning into Direct Action Day. So we had two fences to ride at -9th August and 16th August.

Throughout these months, before the final terrible outbursts of late 1946 and of 1947, we always had before us some day or other as our next time of crisis, watching its approach with intensity and its quiet passing with relief. Festivals, political days, strike days, and so on-every week held its one or two days.
It seemed that the Muslim League ministry of Bengal had no intention of resigning as part of the direct action programme. Power was still too delightful a possession for that, while there was the horrid possibility of a resentful opposition taking up the reins that they would have dropped. So we hoped that all the direct action that was contemplated would be a boycott of Hindu shops and business and a campaign of 'Buy Muslim'.

Muslim interference with Hindu processions and speeches on August 9th was a serious possibility. Our students were still mischievously busy. They thought it good to hold a meeting in Calcutta early in the month in order to point out how the I.N.A. had shown the way to cementing together the two communities and to accuse the British of deliberately causing disunity between Muslim and Hindu for their own nefarious ends. They forgot that whatever limited communal unity there had been in the I.N.A. was only produced by hatred of the British, who were thus, oddly enough, the cementing material even in this undesirable body. Major-General (sic) Chatterjee of the I.N.A. was present, eulogising the Sikhs for their part in the I.N.A. and for the sacrifice of their lives in the cause of freedom. A year later the feelings of Hindus for Sikhs were somewhat altered.

Even in Orissa students found a chance for public action, making wild speeches proclaiming their intention to sacrifice their lives in order to prevent the Orissa Congress Government from constructing the Hiralund dam in the Mahanadi river, a project which these young men held to be simply a device to save Cut tack, the capital, from flooding at the expense of poor Sambalpur!

Bihar railways were still plagued by students who had now become so lawless that the railway police feared for their lives if they attempted to curb their rowdyism or to insist on their taking tickets. Communication cords were pulled and trains stopped wherever it pleased these young men.

On the 24th July the Calcutta Students Federation organised a procession and a meeting in order to demand that the Bengal government should release the rest of the political prisoners, those who were in for really serious offences under criminal law. About five hundred students bearing banners reached the gate of the Legislative Assembly, the police having sensibly let them approach unhindered. Here, a small body of police tried to stop them but the Speaker of the Assembly intervened, letting them into the grounds where they squatted on the grass. Another student procession, over two thousand strong, now approached, so the police found themselves between the inside squatters and the outside demonstrators. Those inside then climbed up on to the balconies and into the rooms and stopped the budget debate with their noise. Some sergeants and constables were roughly handled.

At last the Prime Minister himself came out and addressed them through a loud-speaker,  telling them that he would review all cases of political prisoners.

The students then retired, having gained a complete victory. One of the colleges went on strike because thirty students who could not appear for the last examination had produced medical certificates and now demanded to be examined. This demand was heartily supported by the rest. The strikers also objected to certain restrictions that had been placed on the college magazine.

On the 1st August Calcutta Muslim League students held a meeting at which they urged all and sundry to concentrate on destroying the' British' Government and on driving the British out of India, the arch-exploiters of humanity. All this was quite unexceptionable and would have been harmless if it had not led them on to declare that should the Congress ally itself with the British then it would be hostile. They ended by declaring that the establishment of Pakistan would rid the world of all exploitation and domination. The trouble was that many were now describing the Viceroy's intention to set up an Interim Government as an attempt on his part to ally the British with Congress against the Muslims.

The Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtrya Swayam Sewak Sangh (R.S.S. Sangh), the militant body of the Mahasabha, were naturally making headway, using the rising tide of Muslim opposition to induce more recruits to join the banner of Hindu bigotry. In Bihar, Muslim enmity was stirred up, and consequent Hindu bellicosity appeared round about the R.S.S. Sangh training camp at Gaya with its public displays by many hundreds of volunteers. Bihar had a big Hindu majority. This showing-off roused the martial soul of Hindu Biharis.

In Bengal, also, the Mahasabha was active, encouraging Hindus to prepare secretly against any future communal trouble. All, even the goondas, were to be trained in staff  and dagger play-as though goondas needed training!

Not to be outdone, Mr. Sarat Chandra Bose, brother of the plump Subhas,2 was organising his Forward Bloc in conjunction with Shah Nawaz, ex-I.N.A., who was' operating, in North Bihar. The Bloc was to create a revolution (it always is to create a revolution but never succeeds) as the only way to independence. To achieve its end it also now formed its own body of  volunteers, not a formidable army. To reinforce itself it also tried to get its hands on the Bihar police, the ever-ready instrument of pretty nearly any political mischief-maker. The police gave the Bloc quite appreciable support in the shape of purses.

By mid-July J. P. Narain's R.S.P.I.3 army in Calcutta had reached the stage of squad drill.

All the time the Muslim League was preparing itself for the struggle that lay before it. Its volunteer body, trained in aggressive methods, was daily increasing in numbers and tightening up its organisation. It now came into the daylight as the National Guard, the M.L.N.G., by officially opening its premises at 5 Wellesley Street, Calcutta. Its aims were to protect Muslims and Muslim interests, for every man's hand in the world seemed to be against their people. In particular they held that the British regarded them as hostile. It was at first sight strange to us how often the Muslims of India repeated that the British treated Muslims as their enemies, but on reflection it was found to be not so strange after all. There was Palestine, there was a Viceroy who to them seemed to be intent on putting them under the power of a Congress central government, and there was a European group in Bengal which would not now vote in the Bengal Assembly when it was sure that its vote would tip the scale in favour of Muslims.

Towards the end of the month we were apprised of the programme for Direct Action Day. I t was to follow that of the recent general strike of which I shall later speak. Oddly enough, all Communists, anti-fascists, and, logically enough, all anti-imperialists were asked to join in sympathy. There was to be a meeting at the Ochterlony Monument some three to four hundred thousand strong. Before that, prayers would be said at all mosques against those who oppressed the Muslims. We also expected a tram strike as the Union leader was a Muslim and a Communist, and with that an attempt to hold up all buses and taxis because they were driven by Sikhs.

On the 4th August Messrs. Suhrawardy and Nazimuddin, both of them influential Muslims, spoke violently against the Cabinet Mission and the Congress, the latter saying that the Congress Party was like Hitler's party (a comparison often made privately by the British in India) and that it would be crushed as Hitler was crushed. The M.L.N.G. having ceremonially hoisted their flag at Wellesley Street a fortnight before, was present in some strength. Asre Jadid, a Muslim paper, came out with an incitement to violence for Direct Action Day.

Here I will leave the political parties and their volunteer forces all ready in the wings of the stage to make a sudden and uproarious entry later in August. We now need to turn to the highlight of July, the postal strike.

There was a good deal of labour trouble, mainly in industrial Bihar and round Calcutta. The reasons for strikes in India are multifarious and it is not infrequent for workmen to down tools because one of them has been caught stealing the property of the firm for whom he works and has therefore been discharged. So long as labour in India is so irresponsible it will be impossible to industrialise the country. The working days lost over strikes for which there are quite inadequate causes and even, such as this, thoroughly unjustifiable causes, are legion. Besides these losses there are days wasted over political agitation of some sort or other, not necessarily labour politics. We used to say that in Calcutta every day was 'A Day,' that is, a day of political activity to commemorate some event of the past or to protest against some occurrence of the present. 'Anti-Movement Day,'  'Anti-Partition Day,' 'Anti-Grouping Day,' 'Stop Retrenchment,' and so on: then 'Quit India Day,' 'Direct Action Day,' 'Tilak Birthday,' 'Independence Day,' and others; or a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian holiday. All that was needed was 'Anti-Agitation Day' in order, with the help of Bakr Id, Christmas, Janamasthmi, Sundays, Divali, Dassehra, Easter and a score of others, to fill the calendar right up and to allow labour to indulge in the Utopia of all pay and no work.

The lockout at the Tata foundry in Jamshedpur continued in force. The Union leader, Professor Abdul Bari, was waxing more and more violent in his views, while the efficiency of labour in this big industrial town was daily deteriorating. It looks as though the inefficiency of labour will force India's industries to mechanise their plants and be rid of inferior workmen. I was told that four times as many men were employed per ton of output in India as were employed in the U .S.A.

In mid-July the Posts & Telegraphs employees who had been threatening to strike for some time, downed tools. To meet this contingency Brigadier M. Smelt, the Chief Signal Officer, had been in consultation with provincial governments. At first only some 40 per cent of the employees were involved and only limited help was needed from us, but by the 20th July the strike had become so serious that we had to take our full part in keeping the services going. The greater part of the Command was affected but it was worst and most prolonged of course in Bengal, and particularly in Calcutta. By then the post offices of Calcutta, always dark and ill-lit, their entrances and passage-ways wet with the feet of coolies, dirty monsoon puddles for the unwary entering from the street, were choc-a-bloc with damp bags of mail and littered with papers and old envelopes under the feet of a restless mob clamouring for their letters from the few senior employees who had stuck to their posts.

We set ourselves the task of keeping open all army trunk telegraph and telephone exchanges and lines normally operated and maintained by the Posts & Telegraphs Department-a big task: of clearing all essential State signal traffic and urgent mail: of providing a telephone service for a limited number of essential civilians and government officials for whom telephone facilities were vital to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.

In the early stages the test inspectors refused work, so we clapped our British test linemen on to their jobs and there they remained throughout the strike. For nearly the whole period we had either full or skeleton staffs in all the exchanges, girls of the W.A.C.(I) and British and Indian soldier operators. We maintained courier and repeater stations and overhead trunk line routes throughout the Command, having beforehand moved our maintenance parties out into the countryside ready for the emergency. An added burden on our resources were the frequent calls for us to send out parties to repair lines that had been interrupted by saboteurs of the P. & T. staff.

In some cases our parties managed to catch the miscreants and to hand them over to the police. In many places we patched considerable gaps of stolen wire with field cable. Breaking insulators and binding lines together were the most frequent forms of sabotage. The monsoon aided the opposition to no small extent by washing away in seasonal manner telegraph posts and culverts and by casting trees and broken branches across overhead wires.

The extent of our effort is gauged by the fact that we had at one time 290 linemen out on military trunk routes alone. These routes had recently been handed over to P. & T. Department as we had demobilised our operators and maintenance parties.

Despatch riders and operators cleared over two thousand essential civil messages from the main centres alone in Bengal and Assam besides those dealt with in Bihar. At first we had trouble with picketers and had to post our own protection over post and telegraph offices where our men were working.

Essential telephone messages were dealt with from the very first under our emergency scheme. Bit by bit we increased our activities and linked up the essential civilians through our military exchanges until we had a busy and considerable traffic flowing through. Our great difficulty was that the P. & T. strikers had removed all wiring records.

At railway stations we took all military and civil official mail and delivered it to its addressees and, similarly, received it from senders and routed it on by rail.

By the 7th August the strike was called off and by the 10th the P. & T. services were once more fully manned by civilians. The only serious violence during the strike had been a series of attacks at night on the telegraphic communications to the south of Calcutta, resulting in the train services being reduced by a half for some days. But the temper of the strikers was such that the one moderate leader they possessed, who had tried to avert the strike and then to call it off, had to pack his bag in a hurry, pleading business outside Calcutta, and make himself scarce.

In sympathy with the postal strike the clerks of the Imperial Bank of India saw fit to go on strike. The gallant manager stuck to his desk in Park Street, Calcutta, and with a skeleton staff performed prodigies in handling the Bank's business. The inconvenience caused to vast numbers of people by a bank strike is unbelievable. When it is over and the clerks are back at work there are huge arrears to be made up which take months to eliminate. In the meanwhile our private current accounts are naturally in chaos.

We were to consider ourselves lucky that we had got rid of these two troubles by the time the storm burst on the 16th August. Behind these strikes was the Communist Party of India, now in competition with Mr. J. P. Narain's revolutionary socialists, headaches for the future India rather than {or us. We had cares enough.

In parts of the Command, Congress Party members, always a little mischievous and out to make trouble for the Bengal Muslim ministry, took advantage of the general confusion. They started to set up local administrations parallel to those of the constituted government. 

The Gurkha League, a political body, was now at pains to get the Calcutta Indian public to give up its boycott and its hostility to the Gurkha community of the city. It will be recollected that this boycott started with the actions of Gurkha police in suppressing the riots of the previous February. It was a loyal and staunch effort on their part, not so much loyal to the British as to their calling as armed policemen. A shoe-maker, a semi-educated Indo-Gurkha, announced at a public meeting that the community was suffering for the doings of a handful of Gurkha police sepoys and that the Gurkhas were friends of the Indians and would, when necessary, shoot the white people and not the Indians. At the same time a Gurkha blacksmith was elsewhere saying that the purpose of the Gurkha League was to consolidate and educate Gurkhas. The black-smith's attitude was nearer the true feelings even of these domiciled Gurkhas, while the attitude of Indians towards Gurkhas was better exemplified by the report of a Gurkha officer of one of our regiments who had been on leave in Darbhanga in Bihar. During the journey back he was molested by a large party of Congressmen who pulled the communication cord time and again and generally interfered with the progress of the train. He said that even the railway authorities were showing violent bias against Gurkhas, charging them exorbitant fines for kit alleged to be overweight and refusing to allow the owner to take it with him till the fine was paid.

While on leave he could not wear uniform for he was attacked when he wore it. His opinion was that this Congress force seemed to consist of men freed by the Congress government of Bihar from the local jail together with about a dozen ex-I.N .A. ' domiciled' Gurkhas. Where he stayed the whole lawless area was in the hands of Congress law-breakers. No police were to be seen.

Our Gurkha regiments were getting restless over the lack of any declaration of policy as to what their future was to be. Many of the men took their discharge, and in some units it was touch and go whether or not seventy-five per cent of the men would ask to go. They felt they were being messed about and began to be apprehensive, for the first time in their history as British Gurkha regiments, that the British would befool them by handing them over to India.

In Bihar the Adibassis were obsessed with fear that the local Bihari Hindu would try to snatch their land away from them as soon as the British had gone. The departure of British officials from police and civil administration had now started, the gaps being filled by Indians. Lawlessness was more apparent. Criminals felt that with a disgruntled police their sins would be winked at. It was quite certain that if the left wing started a campaign of violence against the British, then the police would not lift a finger to stop the outbreak nor would their Indian officers try to encourage them to do so. 'Asylum,' was polished up in Bihar in case of accidents. More responsibility for the safety of European women and children, particularly for escorts to places of safety, was laid on the Army as it was removed from the police. Plans were made for the Army to take over police armouries immediately serious trouble started.

Except in Darbhanga, in North Bihar, it was not expected that there would be any serious communal trouble because of the small percentage of Muslims in the population. This appreciation neglected to consider the effects of fanaticism and the peculiarly sadistic nature of large numbers of Hindus.

Little has been said of Anglo-Indians in Eastern Command. Being the oldest part of British India it was full of these people. They formed a very valuable section of the community, providing large numbers of the technical staff of the railways, post and telegraph services, business firms of all sorts and, last but not least, a loyal and dependable element in the Auxiliary Forces. On the whole they were a law-abiding and self-respecting community. Because they always came out strongly on the side of law and order they were disliked by those who wished to use violent methods to gain their political ends. With the impending departure of the British these people would find themselves in a most unenviable situation. What were they to do ? One thing was certain and it was that if they stayed in India they must identify themselves with the people of the country. To this many of them were reconciled and elected to stay as Indian citizens. Others managed to get passages to England, either with promises of employment or to join relations there. A Mr. Ambler propounded to me his scheme to form a farming colony of Anglo-lndians in the Andamans under the CroWn but in the end nothing seems to have Come of it. Anglo-lndians are townsmen and they do not readily take to the life of a farmer. Some of the more timid of the community carried on a fairly successful propaganda against their brethren joining the Auxiliary Forces for fear of Indian reprisals later on. We thought they were being rather shortsighted in view of the turmoil into which we knew Hindustan must later be thrown.

If India treats these people properly and allows them to retain their self-respect and their standard of living they will serve her well. If they are ill-treated they will be the very Worst of India's goonda elements.

During the summer rumours came down from the hills, most of them untrue, about a fermenting rebellion in Eastern Tibet. It took long to mature but it did finally start about a year later and was as suddenly quashed. Tibetan traders coming through Kalimpong kept us informed of Tibet's hopes and fears. It was all very remote from India, but nevertheless of importance on the longer view, for the time when India should be controlling her own relations with her north-eastern borders.4

With all this activity about him the Indian soldier seemed to remain stolidly unmoved,  representative of ninety per cent of India's population, the men of the farms and the fields and the hills-stolidly unmoved and devoted to the Army he served. The British officer kept clear of it, only intervening to explain to his men the meaning of what was passing, to show how it affected them.

We were once more compelled to refute to our men newspaper calumnies against their army. On this occasion5 we picked on one particular paper, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which had accused our men of insulting and attempting to abduct an Indian lady from her husband, of abducting another Indian lady in Ballygunge, assaulting an Anglo-lndian nurse at Howrah, and of impeding the course of justice in a Court case. There was neither a grain of truth nor of evidence in these charges and we said so.

We explained to them the system of war awards and land grants, showing how these varied and that they were purely a matter between the individual and his provincial government. We explained our efforts to get them and their families properly accommodated, to get maternity treatment for their wives and our difficulties in the post-war confusion: how they could help to raise the standard of living in their villages by taking back with them the good habits the Army had taught them: post-war plans for the education of their sons and daughters: future prospects as to pay and allowances and what we were doing to give them vocational training and to resettle them when they left us.

The British officer trudged on quite ignorant of what the future held in store for him, either good or bad, or even if there was any career at all before him. He knew he was out of favour at court but his men trusted him and that was about all that mattered. He was shocked at the court martial and punishment of Commander King, R.I.N ., resulting from the recent mutiny in that Service, when he thought of the extreme clemency shown towards those sailors who had used their guns against their officers.

We had our troubles in the Army, but they were all minor ones of indiscipline due to bad handling by N.C.O.s, V.C.O.s or officers. They amounted to surprisingly little. We were through that part of our test.

On the night of 8/9th August a communal riot broke out in Eastern Bengal at Narayanganj, near Dacca, over Hindus insisting on erecting a pavilion for their Jalan Puja.6 The police had to open fire. In Calcutta communal feeling was rapidly rising.

Notes:

In January 1949, the R.A.F. had a sharp lesson, however undeserved, on the perils and difficulties of' policing' with Regulars, when five aircraft were shot down over Sinai by Jewish fighters. Our men had orders not to shoot till shot at, precisely the same orders as our soldiers 'policing' the North-West Frontier of India used to be given. An order of this sort is typical of those occasions when Regulars are sent out to 'police'.
 
Netaji (leader) of the I.N.A.
 
Revolutionary Socialist Party of India.
 
Appendix IX, India's Mongolian Frontier.
 
ppendix Ill, Talking Point No. .21.

http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study...under_riot.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While RSS and Hindu Mahasabha were standards of Hindu bigotry the Muslim National Guard is all about protecting Muslim rights and interests (of course they accomplished this by murdering Hindus and Sikhs but that doesn't matter).

While many Hindus are sadists, Muslim ghazis are benevolent.