Why Gandhi Spent August 15 1947 In Calcutta Instead Of Delhi

The national capital, like cities and towns across India, erupted in celebration on August 15, 1947. The day’s first official ceremony was the swearing-in of Lord Louis Mountbatten as Governor-General, who until the previous night had served as the last Viceroy of British India. As the day unfolded, some 300 flag-hoisting ceremonies were reported in the capital alone.

At the Constituent Assembly, the name of the Father of the Nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was invoked. Outside, crowds raised cries of “Mahatma Gandhi ki jai”. Yet Gandhi himself was nowhere to be seen. He had chosen to remain away from the capital on the day India finally attained independence.

Two weeks before Independence, Gandhi left Delhi. After spending four days in Kashmir, he travelled by train to Calcutta, where communal violence, which had begun a year earlier on Direct Action Day, had still not subsided. Instead, it spread from the Bengal countryside to Bihar and the United Provinces, and finally to Punjab.

“Since then, not a single day had passed without its toll of communal murder,” wrote Larry Collins and Dominique Lapierre in Freedom at Midnight (1975), describing communities armed with knives, pistols and clubs, and consumed by “reciprocal fear and mistrust”.

In August 1947, a semblance of prosperity concealed the grim reality of Calcutta. As India prepared to become independent, three million people in the city lived in chronic undernourishment, with Collins and Lapierre describing their daily caloric intake as lower than that of inmates of Hitler’s death camps.

It was into this city that Gandhi arrived shortly after 3 pm on August 13. His pre-war Chevrolet cautiously made its way down Beliaghata Road, where he took up residence at Hydari House. “On the afternoon of the 13th,” writes historian Ramachandra Guha in India After Gandhi (2022), “[Gandhi] set up residence in the Muslim dominated locality of Beliaghata, in ‘a ramshackle building open on all sides to the crowds’, to see whether ‘he could contribute his share in the return of sanity in the premier city of Calcutta’.”

The welcome, however, was anything but warm. The crowd was largely Hindu, including many who had lost relatives to Muslim mobs during Direct Action Day. Collins and Lapierre write that when Gandhi’s car appeared, people began shouting his name — but “for the first time in three decades” they were not cheering him. They were cursing him.

Gandhi responded by telling the crowd that he had come to serve Hindus and Muslims alike. He placed himself in their hands, he said, and warned that if they “again go mad”, he would not remain a living witness to it.

Gandhi had come to Calcutta partly in response to a pledge from Muslim leaders in Noakhali that not a single Hindu would be harmed there on August 15. They knew that if the promise was broken, Gandhi would undertake a fast unto death. Now, in Calcutta, he sought to make the city’s Hindus assume similar responsibility for protecting its Muslims.

On the evening of August 14, Gandhi was asked what form the next day’s celebrations should take. His response, as Guha records, was stark: “People are dying of hunger all round. Do you wish to hold a celebration in the midst of this devastation?”

His mood was equally bleak when a Hindustan Times reporter asked him for a message on the occasion of Independence. Gandhi replied that he had “run dry”. When the BBC asked his secretary to help record a message from the man it regarded as the figure who best represented India, Gandhi directed them instead to Jawaharlal Nehru.

Later that evening, at a prayer meeting, Gandhi reflected on the contradiction at the heart of the moment. The freedom he had struggled so long to achieve had come at an unacceptable price: Independence had also meant Partition, after a year of almost continuous communal violence between Hindus and Muslims. He warned that Independence would bring with it a heavy responsibility. If Calcutta could return to peace and brotherhood, perhaps the rest of India could still be saved.

The man who had devoted his life to winning India’s freedom told his followers that he would not join them in celebrating its arrival. Instead, he urged them to observe Independence Day as he would: by fasting and praying for the salvation of India, and by spinning the charkha, the humble wheel he believed could help pull the country back from disaster.

Gandhi marked August 15, 1947, with a 24-hour fast. Yet, on the morning of freedom, there were signs that offered Gandhi some hope. Hindus erected triumphal arches and decorated streets with flags and bunting, while Muslim shopkeepers and householders too put up the flags of the Indian Dominion.

Hindus and Muslims drove together through the streets, shouting “Jai Hind”, while crowds from both communities responded with enthusiasm. Guha notes, “Reports of this spontaneous intermingling seem to have somewhat lifted the Mahatma’s mood.”

He decided to speak about the moment at a prayer meeting. A crowd of between 10,000 and 30,000 people gathered at Rash Bagan Maidan in Beliaghata to hear him. Gandhi said he wanted to believe that the fraternisation between Hindus and Muslims was “from the heart and not a momentary impulse”. Both communities had, he said, drunk from the “poison cup of disturbances”; now that they had reconciled, perhaps the “nectar of friendliness” might taste even sweeter.

Nikita writes for the Research Section of IndianExpress.com, focusing on the intersections between colonial history and contemporary issues, especially in gender, culture, and sport. For suggestions, feedback, or an insider’s guide to exploring Calcutta, feel free to reach out to her at nikita.mohta@indianexpress.com. ... Read More