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Direct Action Day in 1946....
Direct Action Day in 1946....
Item # 563756
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August 17, 1946
THE NEW YORK TIMES, New York, NY, August 17, 1946
* Direct Action Day
* Calcutta riots
This 26 page newspaper has two column headlines on the front page: "90 Die, 900 Hurt in Calcutta As Moslems and Hindus Riot".
Tells of the 1st report of the Riots in Calcutta known as Direct Action Day. Nice to have in this famous NYC title.
Other news of the day throughout. Light browning, otherwise in good condition.
wikipedia note: Direct Action Day, also known as the Great Calcutta Riot, was on 16 August 1946—a day of widespread riot and manslaughter in the city of Calcutta (now known as Kolkata) in the Bengal province of British India. The day also marked the start of what is known as "The Week of the Long Knives".
The Muslim League and the Indian National Congress were the two largest political parties in the Constituent Assembly of India in the 1940s. The 1946 Cabinet Mission to India for planning of the transfer of power from the British Raj to the Indian leadership proposed an initial plan of composition of the new Dominion of India and its government. However, soon an alternative plan to divide the British Raj into a Hindu-majority India and a Muslim-majority Pakistan was proposed. The Congress rejected the alternative proposal outright. Muslim League planned general strike (hartal) on 16 August to protest this rejection, and to assert its demand for a separate Muslim homeland.
The protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta, instigated by the Muslim League and its Volunteer Corps against Hindus and Sikhs, followed by retaliatory attacks on Muslims by Congress followers and supporters. In Calcutta, within 72 hours, more than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents in the city of Calcutta were left homeless. Violence in Calcutta sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Province (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province. These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India.
Category: The 20th Century
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