NB: Those of us who see the events of the late 1940’s in black and white terms ought to study the complexity of historical events as well as of the views of the actors in those events. Some may be surprised to read B. R. Ambedkar’s views on the transfer of population on a communal basis; others may not know of CPI’s support for the demand for Pakistan between 1942 and 1947. In 1940 the CPI’s intellectual mentor Rajni Palme Dutt saw Gandhiji as a Hindu revivalist, but by 1947 the party hailed him as a great fighter for communal harmony. We need to study history without partisan lenses – or at least make an effort to do so.
Not least of the grey areas is the fate of Jogendranath Mandal, member of the Muslim League, and Pakistan’s first Law and Labour Minister. Mandal was witness to the communal violence in East Pakistan in 1947-48. His letter of resignation to Liaqat Ali Khan is a prophetic vision of what was to follow. The Pakistan of 1947 did not last 25 years. Those who think homogenised religious belief can hold nations together could learn something from the history of Pakistan. But then, there are none so deaf as those who do not wish to hear. DS
Fifth October holds no special significance for the residents of 64 A, Sultan Alam Road, where a two-storeyed house stands in the bylanes opposite the South City Mall, in the Lake Gardens area of south Kolkata. Few in this lower middle-class neighbourhood remember that the first law and labour minister of Pakistan, Jogendranath Mandal, spent the last chapter of his life in this house, reminiscing perhaps about his dashed dream of Hindu-Muslim unity in erstwhile East Pakistan. He died unsung in Bongaon in 1968 in the North 24 Parganas, West Bengal.
The house, with its blue windows and colourless outer walls, belongs to Bharat Chandra Adhikary, who gave refuge to Mandal when he returned to India in 1950 as a broken man. He had left Pakistan after resigning from the cabinet.
“I remember Jogen Mandal. He was a friend of my father and came to stay with us when I was a child. He was a kind man but we didn’t know who he was at that time,” Dinesh Chandra Adhikary, the current owner of the house, told The Print. Adhikary said that the neighbourhood doesn’t remember that a former Pakistan minister had spent his last years here.
“When Mandal died, no one from the West Bengal government, the central government, or Bangladesh came to visit. The room upstairs where he stayed has undergone many changes over the years. From outside, the house looks the same though,” said Adhikary. But even this remnant of his story will soon vanish. “We plan to sell this house to a property developer who will build a high-rise building here. That would be the end of its history I guess,” he said….
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Pakistan’s First Law & Labour Minister, Jogendra Nath Mandal’s Resignation Letter, October 1950
Extracts from B. R. Ambedkar’s book on Pakistan (1940, 1945)
It is time for Punjabis to atone for the sins of 1947
Seventy-five Years After Indian Partition
Akhtar Balouch: Why did Qurratulain Hyder leave Pakistan for India?
The CPI in 1947: ‘Bleeding Punjab Warns’ by Dhanwantri & P.C. Joshi
Communist Party of India’s resolution on Pakistan and National Unity, September 1942
An Open Letter to the world on the Bangladesh crisis of 1971
A Brief History of the Sampradayikta Virodhi Andolan; Movement Against Communalism (1984-1993)
After the truth-shower 