dwaipayan sen - no matter how, jogendranath had to be defeated

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Indian Economic & Social History

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DOI: 10.1177/0019464612455273 2012 49: 321Indian Economic Social History Review

Dwaipayan Sen1947Federation and the making of partition in Bengal, 1945

'No matter how, Jogendranath had to be defeated': The Scheduled Castes

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No matter how, Jogendranath

had to be defeated: The Scheduled

Castes Federation and the making of

partition in Bengal, 19451947

Dwaipayan Sen

Department of History

The University of Chicago, IL

This article offers an explanation for the defeat of Jogendranath Mandal and the Scheduled

Castes Federation in the context of partition-era Bengal. Departing from analyses of

Scheduled Caste integration, it explores the Federations efforts at creating an independent

political platform through a strategic alliance with the Muslim League. To this end, it traces

Mandals and the Federations trajectory through the following key moments: the anti-Poona

Pact day and Day of Direct Action, the 1946 election, Dr B.R. Ambedkars election to the

Constituent Assembly, the Calcutta and East Bengal riots, Mandals nomination to the In-

terim Government and the agitation against Partition. In so doing, it tries to show how the

Federations defeat in Bengal was at least in part a consequence of the Congress efforts to

engineer its marginalisation, as well as the Congress and Hindu Mahasabhas agitation for

the Partition of that province. The Hindu majoritarian impulse that led to the Partition in

Bengal thus crippled the Federations struggle for Dalit political autonomy.

Keywords: Jogendranath Mandal, Scheduled Castes Federation, partition, Bengal, the politics ofcaste and communalism

Introduction

The proposition is two-fold: first, that the success of the Congress and HinduMahasabhas demand that Bengal be partitioned necessarily entailed their delib-erate defeat of Jogendranath Mandal and the Scheduled Castes Federation; se-cond, and following from this, that the partition itself be grasped as signifying a

The Indian Economic and Social History Review, 49, 3 (2012): 32164

SAGE Los Angeles/London/New Delhi/Singapore/Washington DC

DOI: 10.1177/0019464612455273


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moment that foreclosed possibilities for the further development of Mandalsand the Federations advocacy of Dalit political autonomy. Inured as we are tounderstanding partitions significance within the rubric of the communal impassebetween unmarked Hindus and Muslims, our historiographical sensitivities re-main insufficient to understanding the peculiar problematic that the partitionposed for Mandal and his hardly insubstantial following in the Scheduled CastesFederation.1

Received historiography has it that Dalits were largely responsive to the Con-gress and Mahasabhas anti-Muslim exhortations in their bid to consolidate Hinduunity.2 No doubt there exists evidence of their participation in communal vio-lence and their receptiveness to ideologies and practices of Hindu communal unity.It is indeed true that many amongst them supported the demand for Partition. Yetit is necessary to place within the same analytical field the substantial evidencethat exists of their deep-seated reservations with the Congress and Mahasabhasprojects of anti-Muslim Hindu unity orchestrated by caste Hindu leaders, as wellthese nationalist parties efforts to nullify the Federation. Reconceived thus,I suggest that Mandal and the Federations protracted marginalisation, which origi-nated in the critical period under consideration, might well be grasped as a neces-sity conjoined to the majoritarian imperatives of Indian nationalism in Bengal. AsI will show, Mandals was a critique of the constitutively communal terms onwhich the transfer of power and Partition were decided. Achieving the long soughtafter Hindu unity of these years entailed manufacturing the defeat of Dalit politi-cal autonomy in Bengal.

In what follows, I attempt to defend these propositions by locating theFederations participation in the Muslim Leagues Direct Action Day against thebackdrop of the two parties recent strategic political alliance; detailing the cir-cumstances of the 1946 elections which resulted in the Congress winning themajority of reserved Scheduled Caste legislative seats; documenting Mandalsattempts at getting Ambedkar elected to the Constituent Assembly; narratingMandals quite exceptional view on the Calcutta riots; discussing his role in theInterim Government of India; elucidating the significance of unity between Dalitand Muslim political parties at a time when this was near unthinkable; andfinally, by assessing the fate of Mandals anti-partition campaign. In so doing,

1 I have described Mandals following thus, because of the debatable view that Mandal and theFederation were essentially marginal political forces amongst Dalits in Bengal. It should also beborne in mind that Mandal and the Federation drew on support from some of the veteran ScheduledCaste MLAs of the time, who either did not contest, or lost, in the 1946 elections. I am thinking inparticular of leaders like Amulyadhan Ray, Anukul Chandra Das or Rasik Lal Biswas, some of whom,despite being elected Congressmen, subsequently experienced a deep disillusionment with theCongress.

2 See, in particular, Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity; Chatterji, Bengal Divided.


No matter how, Jogendranath had to be defeated / 323


I touch on key moments in Mandals and the Federations trajectory through thesefinal two years of British rule in India.

Another view of the partition is possible, by bringing to bear his and the Fed-erations critique of the Congress claim to represent the Dalits on the processesthrough which the decision to divide Bengal were reached. I hope to show thatthe partition in Bengal was as much about a nationalist resolution of the castequestion, as it undoubtedly was about the politics of religious conflict betweenHindus and Muslims. Papering over caste-difference was constitutive of the seem-ingly united Hindu demand for partitioning Bengal. Too long has the analyticaltyranny of communalism overshadowed the insights Mandal might have offeredon this troubled moment.

The DalitMuslim Alliance

The events of mid-August 1946, while typically understood to confirm caste Hin-dus fears about Muslim domination and thus the justification behind the parti-tion, have yet to be adequately situated in the context of the three years of Dalitand Muslim political alliance that preceded them. Although these years are oftenused to explain the growing apprehensions amongst the Hindu intelligentsia theywere also the only time in the history of Bengal, (including right up to the presentmoment) that governmental power in Calcutta was wielded by representativesof communities socio-economically most disadvantaged, namely, Dalits andMuslims. In the political history of Bengal then, they constitute a short periodanalytically untapped for their potentially radical vision. Mandal was at the cen-tre of this novel political aspiration. He joined the previous Nazimuddin ministryshortly before founding the Bengal branch of the Federation in 1943, and wassubsequently chosen to join the Suhrawardy cabinet, as Minister in charge of theJudicial and Legislative department and Works and Buildings.3

Mandal grounded the solidarity between Dalits and Muslims, significantly, inthe perceived politicaleconomic congruence of the two communities. In his view,the spirit animating his alliance with the Muslim League was closely linked to thesocio-economic circumstances experienced by Dalits and Muslims alike. Theshared experience of the grinding poverty of rural Bengal was common to boththeir communities.4 The following reification held force: the British and casteHindus were capital, Dalits and Muslims, labour.5 The vast majority of the Dalit

3 In a recent publication, Bandyopadhyay perhaps mistakenly dates the formation of the BengalFederation to 1945. Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity, p. 249.

4 There were, no doubt, earlier instances of their common cause, like Namasudra and Muslimindifference, even resistance, to the Swadeshi movement championed by leading Bengali nationalistsin the first decade of the century.

5 The point is somewhat akin to that made by Partha Chatterjee in his essay Agrarian Relationsand Communalism in Bengal. Therein, he wrote, As far as agrarian relations in eastern Bengal were


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population was poor, including agriculturalists, sharecroppers and workers, andhad been deprived of formal educationas were the majority of Muslims. Thespirit motivating the political alliance in the domain of elite politics then was todraw on this shared experience, crafting policies benefitting the vast majority ofthe population of Bengal. Mandal was:

persuaded that my co-operation with the League and its Ministry would leadto the undertaking on a wide scale of legislative and administrative measureswhich, while promoting the mutual welfare of the vast bulk of Bengals popu-lation, and undermining the foundations of vested interest and privilege, wouldfurther the cause of communal peace and harmony.6

The events that transpired in August of 1946 then, as a result of the call for theDay of Direct Action, must be placed in the context of the cooperation that de-veloped between the Scheduled Castes Federation and the Muslim League overthe previous three years.7 Thus, the Star of India on 13 August 1946 featured aposter calling for, Representatives of minorities, suppressed and oppressed peopleand anti-Fascist parties who have been unjustly bypassed by the British govern-ment and who are ready to make common cause with the League in its fight forthe equal freedom of the Muslims, the Hindus, the Scheduled Castes, the Adibasis,the tribals, the Christians other peoples are welcome at the meeting.8

concerned, the available evidence seems to suggest that the crucial element which deflected peasantagitations into anti-Hindus movement was not that most zamindars were Hindu and that the grievancesof the predominantly Muslim tenantry consequently took on anti-Hindu overtones, but the fact thatMuslim rent-receivers where they did exist, were considered part of the peasant community whereasHindu zamindars and talukdars were not. The evidence points, in fact, to structures of political authorityand ideology quite autonomous from the straightforward representation of the agrarian structure.Chatterjee, Agrarian Relations and Communalism in Bengal, 19261935, p. 11. Similarly, onemight argue that even if in class terms an elite had developed amongst caste-subalterns, they werenot considered sufficiently distinct from the communities they represented politically. There was noseeming contradiction in the elite amongst Dalits making demands on behalf of the masses of theireconomically less privileged communities.

6 Mr Mandals Letter of Resignation to Mr Liaquat Ali Khan, the Prime Minister of Pakistan,9 October 1950, in Indian Commission of Jurists, Recurrent Exodus of Minorities, p. 354.

7 The Day of Direct Action was a Muslim League protest of the Cabinet Mission proposals. TheMission was mandated with overseeing the transfer of power. Muslims through the country were tosuspend all business... and to observe the complete hartal. Public meetings were to be held on thatday to explain the Leagues rejection of the Cabinet Mission Plan and express the determination ofIndian Muslims to vindicate their honour, to end British slavery and fight the contemplatedcaste-Hindu domination. Das, Communal Riots in Bengal, 19051947, p. 165.

8 Star of India, 13 August 1946. There is a longer history of solidarity between leaders of the Dalitand Muslim communities that stands insufficiently treated. We seem, as it were, to be only able tocomprehend the Leagues concerns for Dalits as cynical and instrumental.




Mandal and the Scheduled Castes Federation had responded in kind. Althoughnot too widely acknowledged, 15 August 1946 was also coincident with theFederations Anti-Poona Pact Day.9 A day prior, the Secretary of the CalcuttaDistrict Muslim League issued a statement urging Muslims to support the Fed-erations protest.10 A procession of Federation and League activists paraded throughseveral streets in central Calcutta and converged at the designated Ochterlonymonument. Mandal presided over a meeting where the speakers condemnedthe Cabinet Mission and the Congress for by passing the legitimate demands ofthe Scheduled Castes and called upon the members to be prepared for any futurestruggle under the leadership of Dr Ambedkar and Mr. Jinnah.11 He informed thathe had received a letter from the Secretary of the Muslim League supportingthe Scheduled Castes and added that they must take joint action to force theCongress and the Government to concede their demands.12

It is of no small significance that a time so unavoidably associated with theDay of Direct Action should also have been designated Anti-Poona Pact Day.I will unravel the full import of its simultaneity with HinduMuslim violence indue course. Suffice it to add that the Federations agitation in the latter half of1946 was a nationwide affair, as was their association with the Muslim League.In the wake of M.A. Jinnahs nomination of Mandal to the interim governmentseveral months later, P.N. Rajbhoj, General Secretary of the All India ScheduledCastes Federation, fully subscribed to the view expressed by Dr Ambedkar thatif the Scheduled Castes were not given separate representation, he would advisehis people to embrace Islam, adding that he had lost faith in Hindu religion.13

A full appreciation of the political sentiments motivating the events ofmid-August 1946 requires particular attention to the contemporary activities ofthe Federation in mofussil towns.14 On 15 August 1946, about 400 persons of theScheduled Caste community of Gopalganj paraded through the main thorough-fares of the town under the leadership of Kiran Chandra Biswas shouting, Downwith British Imperialism, Down with the zamindari system, and We wantseparate electorates. A meeting was subsequently held with Jagabandhu Biswasin the chair. Speakers urged the audience to have faith in the leadership of

9 The Poona Pact was an agreement arrived at between representatives of the contemporaneouslytermed depressed classes and caste Hindus in 1932, to have joint electorates with reserved seats forthe depressed classes, rather than separate electorates for depressed classes and caste Hindus as pro-nounced by British Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonalds Communal Award earlier the same year.

10 Star of India, 14 August 1946.11 Copy of S.B.D.N. dated 21 August 1946, File No. 191/46: Scheduled Castes Federation (Renamed

as Republican Party), Government of West Bengal, Office of Dy. Inspector General of Police,Intelligence Branch, C.I.D., Kolkata, West Bengal State Archives (hereafter File No. 191/46, WBSA).

12 Ibid.13 Morning News, 22 October 1946, File No. 191/46, WBSA.14 File No. 191/46, WBSA contains extensive primary material in this regard, from which the sub-

sequent paragraphs are drawn.


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Dr Ambedkar and declared that if their demands were not considered by theBritish Government and their interests overlooked when the Interim Governmentwas formed, they would be prepared to lay down their lives in the interests oftheir community.

In Khulna, about 50 Scheduled Caste students moved in procession throughKhulna town on 15th August shouting Down with Poona Pact, No compro-mise with the enemy and other slogans. The procession terminated at the KhulnaMunicipal Park where a meeting was held with Ramdayal Das of Faridpur inthe chair. Speakers, including Manohar Dhali, Assistant Public Prosecutor, andSecretary of the District Scheduled Castes Federation, and Jyotish ChandraMandal, a student, urged members of the Scheduled Caste community not to co-operate with the Interim Government as their interests had been overlooked bythe Cabinet Mission. They appealed to the audience to unite under the flag of theAll India Scheduled Castes Federation, and to follow the instructions of DrAmbedkar. They declared that Mr Jogijiban Ram was not the chosen representa-tive of the 50 million Scheduled Caste Hindus in the country. Resolutions werepassed condemning the proposals of the Cabinet Mission and demanding sepa-rate electorates for the Scheduled Caste community.

On 31 August 1946, a large procession organised by the Scheduled CastesFederation and consisting of about 1,500 persons moved through the mainthorough-fares of Kanchrapara town shouting Dr. Ambedkar Zindabad and BenaiGandhi Murdhabad. In Midnapore, about 200 persons attended a meetingorganised by the local branch of the Scheduled Castes Federation on 17 August atKharagpur, with K.L. Maharaj in the chair. M.B. Patel, Secretary of the DistrictScheduled Castes Federation, spoke on the growth and development of theorganisation and the difficulties which had been overcome by Dr Ambedkar inthe interests of the upliftment of the Scheduled Castes. He urged the audience toenrol themselves as members of the Federation and to fight for their legitimaterights.

About 300 persons, supporters of the Scheduled Castes Federation, paraded themain thoroughfares of Jessore town on 15 August under the leadership of AmulyaDhan Ray. This procession was followed by a meeting held at the B. Sarkar Hall,under the chairmanship of Rasik Lal Biswas, who had defected several yearsprior from the Congress. Speakers explained that the Scheduled Castes had beenduped by the caste Hindus. They criticised the proposals of the Cabinet Missionand declared that the Ministers had not looked to the interests of the minorities.They urged members of the Scheduled Castes to be ready to fight against theCongress and the British in alliance with the Muslims, in order to wrest their legi-timate demands. Members of the Muslim League who were present deliveredsimilar speeches.

All these events evidence, without a doubt, the presence of a political will andconsciousness entirely resistant to caste Hindu and Congress dominance in the




social and political life of Bengal. The Federations struggle for Dalit politicalautonomy was at stakethe demand for recognition as a distinct political com-munity to be represented by leaders selected by the Scheduled Caste communi-ties alone.15 Mandal once described this as the chance to stand up on our ownfeet and not be dependent on either the Congress or the League.

Similar protests occurred elsewhere in India. Perhaps most significantly, theysuggest the considerable pool of support the Federation drew on in rural Bengal.As an Intelligence Bureau Officer, one P.C.M. bluntly noted, Scheduled CastesFederation is the main organization of Scheduled Caste [sic].16 Similarly, theViceroys estimation in a letter to Pethick-Lawrence in late 1945, that the Federa-tion ...is probably more representative of SCs opinion than any other.17 Compar-ing the spread of the Federation to the Congress own organisation, the DepressedClasses League, one D.A. Brayden in a letter written in July 1945 to his superior,the Deputy Director of Intelligence concluded, On a reference to the differentdistricts in the Province, it is found that branches of the All India Scheduled CastesFederation exist in nine districts while a branch of the All India Depressed ClassesLeague exists in only the subdivision of one district.18 Here is one answer to thevexed question of whether or not the Congress could justifiably claim to be thetrue representative of the Dalits.

The 1946 Election

Indeed, this question had been posed with particular urgency only months prior toAnti-Poona Pact Day during the 1946 elections. The fact that the Congress sweptthe Scheduled Caste reserved seats by winning in 24 out of 30, a stunning re-sponse to Ambedkars and Mandals claim that Congress did not represent theircommunities, has been freighted with tremendous importance in recent historiog-raphy: the integration of the Scheduled Castes into mainstream nationalism19;the crisis of the Federation brought about by its own inadequacies20; or theextraordinary success of propaganda about a Hindu community.21 Sekhar

15 It is not the case that that the Federation was solely concerned with questions of representation.Much of their pamphlet literature, many of their resolutions, and their various leaders concernsincluded questions of economic justice, zamindari abolition, workers and womens rights, equitableprices for produce, the institution of minimum wages, education, amongst other issues.

16 Intelligence Bureau Notes, File No. 191/46, WBSA.17 Letter from the Viceroy to Lord Pethick-Lawrence, 9 October 1945, IOR/L/PO/10/22, London,

British Library.18 Letter from D.A. Brayden to G. Ahmed, 23 November 1945, File No. 191/46, WBSA.19 While it is true that Sekhar Bandyopadhyay has gradually complicated his argument about

Scheduled Caste integration, (most recently in the post-script to the second edition of his book Caste,Protest and Identity), he also states in the new preface of the same edition that his main conclusionshave not changed.

20 Bandyopadhyay, Transfer of Power.21 Chatterji, Bengal Divided, p. 230.


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Bandyopadhyay has interpreted these results to have been an index, though stillin a very limited sense, of popular will as well.22 Such assessments have beencalled into question by Ramnarayan S. Rawat, who demonstrated the consider-able weight to the Federations claim that the electoral arrangements underthe Poona Pact in force during the election were heavily tilted in favour of theCongress candidates in the United Provinces.23 My own evidence corroboratesthis stance.24 However, it is possible to push further, and more assiduously detailthe circumstances and consequences of this crucial election. It is only thus onemight appreciate the coincidence of Partition and the Federations defeat inBengal.

To begin with, other indices of Dalit political consciousness might well in-clude the fact that of the 121 candidates who stood for the primary elections inBengal, only 29 were from the Congress. Or that of the 75 candidates who suc-cessfully emerged from the primary elections to the General elections to contestthe 30 seats reserved for Scheduled Caste MLAs, only 25 were Congress, whereasIndependents (the largest category) numbered 37. In Jessore, a Federation candi-date who won the second-highest number of votes in the primary elections, failedto win either of the two seats reserved for Scheduled Caste candidates in thegeneral electionboth went to the Congress. In Faridpur, both of the Federationscandidates who won the second and third highest number of votes in the primaryelections, failed to win either of the two reserved seats in the general election.Such data raises serious questions about the circumstances under which 24 ofthese 25 Congress candidates would emerge victorious in the general election,and whether the results of the general election ought to be read as a reliable indi-cation of Dalit political preferences.25 This being the case, the Congress heg-emony over the Scheduled Castes of Bengal might further be qualified on accountof the fact that four of their leaders subsequently defected to Mandals Federationafter the elections, a development I will shortly address; or that the property andeducation qualifications in force excluded the majority of the Dalit populationfrom franchise.

But there is more. Mandal was one of but two Federation candidates all overIndia to have won in the electioneven Ambedkar did not emerge victoriousfrom amongst the 151 seats in the various provincial assemblies reserved for the

22 Bandyopadhyay, From Alienation to Integration, p. 373.23 Rawat, Making Claims for Power; Rawat, Partition Politics and Acchut Identity.24 Indeed, it seems clear that the British government anticipated this eventuality: See, Confidential

Brief for Dr Ambedkars Visit to the U.K. 1946. IOR/L/PJ/10/50, London, British Library. Thatsaid, neither did they concede that the Federation, as opposed to the Congress, represented the Dalitson account of it having contested a limited number of seats.

25 The corresponding figures for the totals of all provinces where primary elections were held areas follows: of a total 505 candidates in the primary elections, 153 were Congress; of a total of 383candidates sent to the general elections, 142 were Congress. See, Return Showing the Results ofElections, New Delhi, 1948.




Scheduled Castes. It is undoubtedly true that the Congress sheer organisationalmachinery and financial clout dwarfed the Federations, yet this only makes thedepth of their anti-Federation sentiment all the more instructive. Here is Mandal,writing to the Governor of Bengal, about the 1946 election. An extensive quota-tion is required:

Congressmen prevented Scheduled Caste voters from voting and attendingmany polling stations by force and intimidation. Caste Hindu zaminders,talukders, mahajans and school teachers threatened and stopped ScheduledCaste voters from voting. Polling stations wrongly selected at corner and casteHindu areas causing inconvenience to Scheduled Caste voters and giving un-due privilege to Congressmen. Promulgation of Section 144 was utilised byeducated and clever caste Hindu Congressmen to threaten illiterate ScheduledCaste voters with fear of imprisonment for attending polling stations. CasteHindu presiding and polling officers hobnobbed with caste Hindu Congress-men at all centres and encourage proxy and false personation by turning deafear to and disregarding objections raised by many polling agents at many poll-ing stations. More than 50% caste Hindu votes polled for the Congress candi-date was proxy votes. At many polling centres, Caste Hindu Presiding andPolling Officers snatched ballot papers from Scheduled Caste male and fe-male voters in spite of protest and put in the Congress Candidates box. Theyinstructed and persuaded many voters to vote for the Congress Candidate. Elec-tions were stopped before due time for which many voters could not cast theirvotes. At some polling stations where the number of Scheduled Caste voterswas very large, the Caste Hindu Presiding Officers opened polling booths muchlater than the due time and harassed my voters by making undue delay in issu-ing ballot papers for which my voters had to wait till late at night and many ofthem could not record their votes. Many Scheduled Caste voters were refusedballot papers on frivolous grounds. Congressmen gave bribe to voters of dif-ferent communities. In some cases, they delivered lectures showing picturesin which they depicted me as a man of very immoral character and narratedmany false stories to prove me to be a man of vicious character which ad-versely prejudiced my voters and materially affected my election. All thesefacts and many others materially affected the whole election. Praying for kindorders re-election.26

In the absence of a detailed voter lists, it is difficult to calculate the preciseeffect of these astounding allegations Mandal levelled at the Congress on the

26 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, pp. 2122. Masayuki Usuda has written thatthere seems to have been a considerable degree of obstruction arising during the campaign. Usuda,Pushed towards the Partition, p. 252.


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election results if they are indeed true. What makes such activities all the moretelling are the stringent financial circumstances under which the Federation oper-ated. Mandal, who along with significant support from the large pool of well-wishers from amongst the Namasudra and wider Dalit community funded theelection campaigns, could only afford to put up eight candidates for election.27

Having to attend to campaigning for his own election and the constraints of timeand money, Mandal was unable to canvass for the remaining Federation candi-dates in their own constituencies, leading, in his view, to their defeat. The Con-gress, nevertheless, decided that Mandal had to be stopped in his tracks. As Mandalrecalled, No matter how, Jogendranath had to be defeated.28 The political ideol-ogy he represented had become absolutely objectionable. It is the coincidence ofthis imperativehad to be defeatedwith Partitions politics that I wish tounderscore.

Mandal mentioned the following transgressions in connection with the 1946election in the northern Bakarganj general constituency, one of the two electionsin which he was a candidate (and the same constituency from where he had ini-tially been elected in 1936 amidst unprecedented circumstances): several gazet-ted officers took it upon themselves to sign several thousand election ballots infavour of the Congress candidate and added these to the totals at the electionoffice late at night, well past the time the polling was meant to have ended. Se-cond, the Congress put up one Manoranjan Gupta, the only candidate who couldpossibly carry the confidence of the various political outfits in northern Bakarganjat the time despite his being imprisoned in Meerut jail in their bid to outdo Mandal.He heard that thousands of voters had cast their ballots under false pretexts. Manywomen voters had been allowed to cast ballots not only for themselves, but in lieuof several amongst their female relatives as well. The presiding officers, not wish-ing to instigate disaffection, did not prevent this from occurring.29

Mandal eventually won from a reserved seat in the south Bakarganj constitu-ency, the very heartland of Namasudra political strength, containing as it didPirojpur and Patuakhali municipalities, areas from which the first stirrings ofNamasudra political activity emerged. Reaching back into this history, he cred-ited the Dalit voters of that constituency for his own historic election in 1946;historic, as will soon be elaborated, because of Mandals absolutely critical andlargely unacknowledged role in ensuring Ambedkars election to the constituent

27 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 123.28 Ibid., p. 126.29 Ibid., pp. 12627. It is possible that these infringements were what Governor Burrows had in

mind when he conceded to Lord Pethick-Lawrence (in contrast to the thrust of his report, whichsought to convince his superior of the remarkably little trouble in Bengal) that there were in factcases of Government Officers partiality towards a particular party. Letter from F.J. Burrows to LordPethick-Lawrence, 5 April 1946.




assembly.30 He had been approached by several prominent Namasudra socialwelfare workers of Pirojpur to seek election from south Bakarganj, and it wasthrough their and various students organisational efforts that Mandals campaignsucceeded. Indeed, his very candidacy emerged as a product of considerabledebate amongst the Namasudras of southern Barisal about which leader of sev-eral, including the incumbent Upendranath Edbar, was the surest claimant to themantle of legislative representativeness.

Mandal contended against the smear campaign the Congress had launchedagainst him in northern Barisal. He had devoted his time to south Barisal, and inhis view the district Congress activists had made the most of his absence. Thebasis of his candidacy was called into question given that his residence was innorth Barisal and an election petition was filed against him, which the DeputyMagistrate rejected. On returning to north Barisal after an absence of severaldays, Mandal recalled a student leader, one Surendranath Sikdar, bursting out intears and narrating the following to him:

Sir, taking advantage of your absence, Congress has spoiled the entire fieldfor you. The zamindars and talukdars of this area, who never set foot in theprajas homes, are canvassing at the prajas homes, so much so that some arestaying the night in the cowsheds. Many caste-Hindu vakils, moktars anddoctors are wandering the Namasudra villages canvassing against you. Thecaste-Hindu male and female students of the colleges are going round the homesof Namasudra leaders and are spending the night in some of these homes.Besides this, they are evenly distributing money. Please consider what youwill do now. After today and tonight the vote collection will begin.31

Despite the forethought the Congress appeared to have given to such adversecircumstances, Mandal was elected from South Barisal, again, as one of the two

30 There is considerable misinformation about this election. Christophe Jaffrelot writes that in1946, Ambedkar had contested elections to join this body, not in Bombay, where Congress was theruling party, but in Bengal, where he was elected after winning the support of the Muslim League.See Jaffrelot, Dr Ambedkar and Untouchability, p. 100. Another instance of this, amongst others, isAditya Nigams mis-attribution of credit to the Muslim League in a recent blog posting: Ambedkarwas elected to the Constituent Assembly as independent member from Bengal with Muslim Leaguesupport. This emphatic assertion comes in the context of a rebuttal of Sudipta Kavirajs claim thatAmbedkar was critically reliant on Congress support and Nehrus dominance inside the Congress.A gathering impulse of hagiographic exaggeration of Ambedkars single-handed impact on Indiansociety through its constitution does serious damage to an unexcited assessment of causes and con-sequences in political history. Nigam, Reflections on Sudipta Kavirajs Marxism in Translation.I hope the evidence I present will be of some relevance to the broader set of debates Nigam discusses.I agree with Nigams impulse, yet would argue that Mandal and his movement in Bengal be creditedwith Ambedkars election. The implications of this should be obvious.

31 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 138.


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sole successful Federation candidates all over India, catapulting him into an un-expected seniority within the Federation itself.

Mandals election in 1946 was all the more exceptional if considered inlight of some of the contemporaneous correspondence between the Governor ofBengal and the Viceroy that suggests the charge of bribery. In one of his reportsassessing the probable outcomes of the 1946 election, the Governor, FrederickBurrows, wrote: The Hindus will be a solid party of probably not less than 90and not more than 96according to the numbers of Scheduled Caste seats cap-tured by the Congress. There are 30 Scheduled Caste seats of which probably atleast 24 will go to the Congress.32 How would Burrows have known that therewould be such a dramatic swing in the number of Scheduled Caste seats thatCongress would clinch, and that too, with such precision? Especially given thathe wrote very early in the year, and the elections had not as yet occurred? A priorreport casts some light on the matter, the significance of which cannot be under-estimated. Written on 5 November 1945, Burrows speculated to Wavell on theoutcome as follows:

It is rash to attempt to forecast the result of the elections, but the present out-look is that, in the General Constituencies and Muslim Constituencies, theCongress and Muslim League respectively will come out in considerably greaterstrength than at presentand that, failing agreement between Muslim Leagueand Congress, we shall see a Muslim League Ministry with probably no CasteHindu support and probably little Scheduled Caste support (Caste Hindu moneyis likely to influence the Scheduled Caste vote and elected members)...33

Consider this candid turn of phrase: Caste Hindu money is likely to influencethe Scheduled Caste vote and elected members. Burrows casual bracketing ofthe monetary influence likely to be exerted in determining the outcome of the1946 elections is of obvious relevance to the line of argument pursued herein. Tobe sure, for the sceptic this may not constitute unimpeachable evidence per se,but it strongly suggests that the electoral results were shaped by such pre-meditated attempts by the Congress, of utterly dubious legality, to condition theexpression of Dalits political preferences.34

Consider as well, the All India Scheduled Castes Federations memorandumto the Cabinet Mission which argued that the Federations routing in the elec-tion was because the joint electorates in which seats have been reserved for theScheduled Castes have, by reason of enormous disparity in the voting strengthof the Scheduled Castes and the Caste Hindus, become rotten boroughs from the

32 Governors Report, 7 January 1946.33 Governors Report, 5 November 1945.34 Is it, for instance, mere coincidence that a considerable number of the candidates who did even-

tually win with Congress support were relatively unknown figures in legislative politics?




point of view of the Scheduled Castes and pocket boroughs from the point ofview of the Caste Hindus, who have been able to put up Scheduled Caste candi-dates, wishing to be their tools and get them elected in the joint electorates exclu-sively with Caste Hindu votes.35 The system of joint electorates had made amockery of the Scheduled Castes right to send their truest representatives tothe legislatures and as such, was a fraud upon them. The memorandum includedan appendix analysing the relative strength of the caste Hindu voters and Sched-uled Caste voters in constituencies in which seats were reserved for ScheduledCastes in the Bombay provinces which showed how the Scheduled Caste votersare vastly outnumbered by the Caste Hindu voters and how impossible it is forthe Scheduled Caste voters to win the reserved seat by dint of their voting strength,even if everyone of the Scheduled Caste voter were to come to poll. Exactly thesame sort of situation exist [sic] in other provinces.36 The Federations point wasthat by implicitly enabling Hindu majoritarianism, the electoral mechanismsunder the Poona Pact predominantly ensured the election of Scheduled Castecandidates palatable to the caste Hindu electorate and were thus unreliable as ameasure of ascertaining the independent political preferences of Scheduled Castesthemselves.

Furthermore, while on the subject of representativeness, by the Congress ownadmission not a single one of its Scheduled Caste candidates who won in the1946 elections was included in the list of 72 representatives from Bengal to theAll India Congress Committee that year.37 Neither was a single one of them presi-dent or secretary of any of the district Congress Committees in the entirety ofBengal.38 Their conspicuous absence from any position of authority within theBengal Congress party structure thus offers a comment on the depth of theirintegration.

Indeed, although there were serious differences between Dalit leaders in theCongress and those in the Federation, representatives of the Depressed ClassesLeague (the Congress body) were also disappointed with the absence of theirrepresentatives from the Cabinet Missions deliberationsthe same context thatmotivated the Scheduled Castes Federations support and joining in the MuslimLeagues protest. In An Open Letter to the British Cabinet Mission and the Leadersof the Country which Dharam Prakash, founder of the All India Depressed ClassesLeague sent to Surendra Mohan Ghosh, President of Provincial Congress Com-mittee in Calcutta, Prakash opined that the parity granted to Hindus and Muslims

35 All India Scheduled Castes Federation, Memorandum to the Cabinet Mission, 5 April 1946,p. 4.

36 Ibid., p. 16. Indeed, the President of the Muslim League in Great Britain, Ali Muhammad Khan,delineated a near identical interpretation of the 1946 elections as they concerned the ScheduledCastes in his Open Letter to the British Government.

37 Congress Handbook, 1946, pp. 46.38 Ibid., pp. 4954.


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came at the cost of Depressed Classes representation. Although he scolded theFederation for cursing their twice-born Hindu brethren in the hour of elections,hurling abuses at them, picking up a quarrel with the Congress, burning downGandhiji caps, and throwing mud on revered Gandhiji, his objections were nearlyidentical to those expressed by Mandal and Ambedkar. Having noted howMahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan had agreed that the CabinetMissions declaration is the best form of what the British Government could doin the present circumstances, Prakash concluded that We also do not doubt theirhonesty and good intentions.

But, at the same time, we cannot conceal the unpleasant fact that, perhaps, themissions have overlooked the claims of the Depressed Classes by an error oftheir judgment and that that wrong can still be rectified by the amendment ofthe proposals. We have sanguine hope and complete faith that the importantand serious problem of the Depressed Classes shall receive due considerationat the hands of the British Cabinet Mission and leaders of the country, who,will give evidence of their sense of justice, fair play, devotion to duty andmagnanimity.39

Such hopes, as we know, were misplacedthe Mission and the Congress wereonly too eager to bypass the problem of the Depressed Classes.

Given the exceptional constraints recounted above, Mandals attribution of hiselection to a sequence of events culminating in the existence of the constitutionalprovisions for the Scheduled Castes of postcolonial India is all the more remark-able. He reasoned about the very possibility of Ambedkars work in the IndianConstitution as follows: But Jogendranaths achievement lay at the root of this,and that Jogendranath was elected by the Namasudras of Pirojpur and Patuakhalimunicipality. Thus they are the recipients of the gratitude of the Scheduled Castesof all of Bharat.40 I leave aside the question of whether Mandals assessment wasa reasonable one, especially given Congress supposed cooptation of Ambedkarfollowing on the transfer of power.41 It is undeniable however (irrespective of theCongress subsequent change in attitude), that within the historical present Ambedkar

39 Dharam Prakash, An Open Letter to the British Cabinet.40 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 129.41 Certainly other members of the Federation concurred with this assessment, as suggested by

J.D. Manikpuris introduction of Mandal, as President-elect of the All India Scheduled CastesFederations student conference held in Nagpur in late December, 1946. Following a listing of hisvarious honours: ... Over and above all, he has rendered greatest service to the Scheduled Castescommunity in India by securing Dr. Ambedkars election to the Constituent Assembly in spite ofviolent Congress opposition. All India Scheduled Castes Students Federation, Report of the SecondSession, p. 5.




would not have been initially elected to the Constituent Assembly from Bengalwere it not for Mandals efforts amidst entirely adverse circumstances.

Ambedkars Election to the Constituent Assembly

Ambedkar travelled to Calcutta following the announcement of the elections tothe Constituent Assembly from the various provincial assemblies. He hoped togain the support of the European MLAs in Bengal as he saw no prospects of hiselection from his base in Bombay, but upon hearing that they would not be par-ticipating, came away disappointed. He complained to Mandal that there was nochance of his being elected from any other province except Bengal and even thatdid not come to fruition.42 It was then that Mandal took it upon himself to getAmbedkar elected, even as the latter returned to Delhi utterly dejected.43

Mandal entered nomination papers in Ambedkars name, and commenced acampaign to elicit support. Before long, the Congress launched its own efforts tostop Ambedkar from being elected. Kiran Sankar Roy, one of the senior-mostleaders of the Bengal Congress, was allegedly requested to stay away from theAll-India Congress Committee meeting in Bombay that year, as no matter how,Dr. Ambedkar has to be defeated.44 Various student activists of the Federation,whom Mandal had directed to elicit support from amongst the MLAs whose voteswould count, undertook the work of his campaign. Both M.B. Mullick andP.R. Thakur, major Dalit leaders in Bengal, had also decided to contest the elec-tion, making Mandals efforts to get Ambedkar elected all the more challenging.

He personally secured the agreement of the independent Rajbangshi MLA fromRangpur, Narendra Narayan Roy. The Congress apparently kept one of their MLAsfrom Tangail, Gayanath Biswas, from meeting with Mandal evidently to stymiethe latters campaign. It is thus absolutely clear that even at this stage, the muchcommented cooptation of Ambedkar by the Congress had not occurred, indeed,quite the opposite; the Congress was quite intent to ensure his exclusion. Mandaldescribed the Congress and Hindu Mahasabhas vituperation towards him fortrying to get Ambedkar elected at a Federation meeting in late 1946 as follows:

You have seen to what extent the Congress, Hindu Mahasabha, all the casteHindu organizations have tried to prevent the election of Dr. Ambedkar to theConstituent Assembly from Bengal. They have circulated vile falsehoods andmuch propaganda against us. I have had to listen to various types of heart-rending abuse. I have been given thousands of rupeesthis type of untruth

42 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 145.43 Ibid., pp. 14453.44 Ibid., p. 146.


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has been publicised. I have digested so much poison that everything from mynails to the hair on my head ought to have turned blue.45

Although Gayanath Biswas was elected a Congressman, he was willing tosupport Ambedkar and sent word of his intentions to Mandal from his concealedlocation. The evening before the election at the Assembly, Mandal received atelephone call from Khwaja Shahabuddin confirming the formers prediction dur-ing a conversation earlier in the day that once M.B. Mullick heard that GayanathBiswas and Dwarika Nath Baruri would vote for Ambedkar, he would do accord-ingly. Mandal had also received the commitments of MLAs from Jessore andPabna, Bholanath Biswas and Haran Chandra Barman, respectively. A crowd ofFederation activists gathered outside the Assembly to receive news of the elec-tions results on the day they were to be announced, and news of Ambedkars elec-tion was celebrated at a victory procession taken out throughout Calcutta thefollowing day and subsequent festivities Mandal hosted at his own home.46

Shortly after the election, several of the MLAs Mandal had encouraged to votefor Ambedkar defected from the Congress. A letter published in Jagaran (theFederation mouthpiece founded by Mandal) on 12 October 1946, by Haran ChandraBurman, Dwarkanath Baruri, Dr Bholanath Biswas and Gayanath Biswas, castssome light on the matter. Titled Why We Left the Congress, the four MLAsdeemed it their duty to give our reasons to our constituents in particular and thepublic in general as to... their recent defection. Although they had joined Con-gress, were elected with their support, and extended assurances about the legiti-mate rights and interests of the Scheduled Castes, as days passed by we becamedoubtful about the Congress attitude towards the Scheduled Castes. Our hopesand aspirations to serve our people were set at naught by a series of deeds and ex-pressions of the Congress High Command.47 First, the Congress had done graveinjustice to the Scheduled Castes of all provinces in depriving them of their dueshares in the Constituent Assembly. Scheduled Castes were disproportionately

45 Bangiya Pradesik Taphasili Jati Phedareshaner Caturthha Barshik Adhibeshan, 31 December1946, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, p. 121.

46 In a congratulatory letter to Ambedkar, Mandal described the procession as follows: ... abouthalf a mile in length consisting of several thousands of people with slogans expressing our sympathyto the Satyagrahis and other slogans such as Dr. Ambedkar Jindabad, Scheduled Castes FederationJindabad, Down with Cabinet Mission, Boycott Congress, Benia Gandhi Murdabad, so onand so forth. No police help was requisitioned. The procession paraded along many main roads andstreets covering a distance of about 10 miles. It was an unprecedented affair in Calcutta. All went onsmoothly. Letter from J.N. Mandal to B.R. Ambedkar, 25 July 1946. Ambedkar wrote to Mandalinquiring into the costs he had incurred over the course of the campaigna sum of four and a halfthousand rupeesto which the latter replied that they could discuss it in due course in person. Whenthey met in Delhi several days later, Mandal declined any reimbursement, claiming whatever expenseshad been occurred were for the wider political community, and not Ambedkar himself.

47 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath o Babasaheb Ambedkar, pp. 8688; see also Jagaran,12 October 1946.




under-represented. Second, they had appointed but one seat to 60 million Sched-uled Castes, while the same was awarded to 3 million Sikhs, or a few millionIndian Christians, or a few million Parsees. Third, Jagjivan Rams selection to theInterim Government reflects another act of gross injustice and insincerity to theScheduled Castes inasmuch as the said Mr. Jagjivan Ram is more a puppet inthe hands of the Congress than a representative of the Scheduled Castes. Fourth,by excluding Dr. Ambedkar, the fittest representative of the Scheduled Castesfrom the Interim Government, the Congress had forfeited the confidence of60 million Scheduled Castes. Fifth, Maulana Abul Kalam Azads (CongressPresident) request to the Viceroy to refuse recognition to the Scheduled Castesthe sole object of which is to do away with the separate political entity of theScheduled Castes in the national life of India.48 Last but not least, the CongressGovernments treatment of the Scheduled Caste satyagrahis in Poona and Nagpur,and the threat to suppress with iron hand the Satyagraha and any other movementof the Scheduled Castes amply demonstrates the real motive of the Congress andhow the Scheduled Castes will fair under Congress rule.49 The four MLAs thusconcluded that the Congress will never help the Scheduled Castes to securetheir political rights and interests which can only be achieved by the unitedefforts of all the Scheduled Castes people under the banner of the All-IndiaScheduled Castes Federation and leadership of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar. ... If they failto do so, the Scheduled Castes are doomed forever.50

This surge in support for Ambedkar that Mandal orchestrated became the basisfor Ambedkars own appeal to the British government that they reconsider theirrefusal of recognition to the Federation. In a letter protesting Attlees stancethat, I am afraid that I cannot accept the view that the Cabinet Mission and theViceroy were unjust to the Scheduled Castes...,51 Ambedkar replied as follows:That the Mission was grossly misinformed is proved by my election to the Con-stituent Assembly from Bengal. The Cabinet Mission stated in the House of Com-mons that my influence was confined to Bombay and C.P. How is it then thatI was elected from Bengal?52 Ambedkar then impressed upon Attlee, three factsregarding his election to the Assembly:

One is that I did not merely scrape through but I came at the top of the pollbeating even Mr. Sarat Chandra Bose, the topmost Bengalee leader of the

48 Ibid. Indeed, Mandal also emphasised this point as well as the brutal repression of the Federationssatyagraha in Poona and Nagpur in his address to the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation in Calcuttaon 31 December 1946.

49 Ibid.50 Ibid.51 Letter from Mr Attlee to Dr B.R. Ambedkar, in Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches, Vol. 17,

Part 2, p. 250.52 Protest Letter of Dr Ambedkar to Mr Attlee, in Ibid., pp. 25354.


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Congress party. Secondly, I am in no way connected by communal ties withthe Scheduled Castes of Bengal. They are of different castes to which I dontbelong. In fact the people of my caste do not exist in Bengal at all and yet theBengalee Scheduled Castes supported me, so strongly that I was able to comefirst. Thirdly, though the Scheduled Castes in Bengal had been returned on theCongress ticket, yet they broke the rule of their party not to vote for anybodyexcept for Congressmen and voted for me. Does this prove that I have no fol-lowing in Bengal?53

On account of his election from Bengal, Ambedkar challenged Attlee, if theCabinet Mission are honest in their conclusion, they ought to revise their errone-ous opinion which they have expressed in the House of Commons and ... giveproper recognition to the Federation.54

The Federation, as is well known, did not eventually receive due recognition,but the basis for not doing so was fundamentally conditioned by everything theCongress had done to effectively silence the organisation: from insisting on thejoint-electorate terms of the Poona Pact which worked to the Federations disad-vantage, to undertaking the electoral misdemeanours Mandal alleged, to activelyworking to bias the electorate against him and the Federation. To be sure, if one isto believe Mandal, both his own election to the Bengal Assembly, and Ambedkarsconsequent election to the Constituent Assembly was of tremendous import tothe course of post-colonial constitutionality, but the denial of recognition to theFederation signified the exclusion of their political agenda from the terms of de-bate under which power was being transferred. The implications of this exclusionbecome clearer when considered alongside the communal violence synonymouswith Partition.

Mandal and the Calcutta Riots

Scholars will be familiar, from the work of Sekhar Bandyopadhyay, BidyutChakrabarty and Partha Chatterjee, with the anger and vitriol directed at Mandalin the days after the Calcutta riots.55 Jogen-Ali Mulla became a favourite slight,as certain segments of public opinion, including other prominent Dalit leaders,turned violently against him, demanding his resignation from the Suhrawardy

53 Ibid.54 Ibid. Earlier in the same letter, Ambedkar protested the exclusion of the Scheduled Castes from

the consultations about the future of British India and argued, ...that the majority of the ScheduledCastes are with the Congress is an atrocious statement and has no foundation in truth. Ambedkarlaid out his critique of the Cabinet Mission in a memorandum that he circulated prior to departure toLondon to meet with Attlee and Churchill in October 1946. See, The Cabinet Mission and theUntouchables, in Ibid., pp. 26365.

55 Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Protest, and Identity; Bandyopadhyay, Caste, Culture and Hegemony;Chakrabarty, The Partition of Bengal and Assam; Chatterjee, The Second Partition of Bengal.




ministry. Mandal was perceived as but a stooge of the Muslim League, a viewthat misjudged his emphasis on Dalit political autonomy. Bejoy Krishna Sarkar, aCongress MLA, posed his criticisms most pointedly. Sarkar asked, given thatMandal associated with the Leagues direct action, what had he done to securethe lives and property of the Scheduled Castes of the different parts of the pro-vince and what rehabilitation measures his cabinet had proposed for familiesdestroyed by their relatives deaths. Lastly may I ask whether he is partiallyresponsible for the so many lost lives of the Scheduled Castes in that riot?56

We know a great deal of how Mandal was pilloried by other Dalit and casteHindu MLAs. As the leading Dalit minister in the Muslim League ministry, thefull force of Hindu Bengals fury and indignation was directed towards him. Incontrast, we know relatively little about how Mandal himself was reacting andresponding to the maelstrom of violence for which he was held accountable. Whatfollows, therefore, is a close reading of his perspective a little less than a monthafter the worst of the Calcutta riots had subsided. As I hope will be demonstrated,he adopted an entirely exceptional view on the communal violence for which hewas allegedly culpable.57

Mandal first aired his views on the Calcutta riots in an editorial published inJagaran.58 He complained that those caste Hindu papers which published variouspieces chastising him, did not offer him the opportunity to respond to public cen-sure. Indeed, he had even sent various statements to their offices to no avail: theyrefused to publish them. This unwillingness, he reasoned, was an outcome of thefact that his policies and opinions no longer served the caste Hindus.

Responding to critics trying to tarnish his reputation, he alleged that the ma-jority of Dalits placed no value in their accusations, given that they were pre-dominantly Congress or Hindu Mahasabha salaried workers trying their levelbest to fancy themselves ministers. He expressed his belief that opinion wouldnot be swayed by the injudiciousness and thoughtlessness of such men. He pre-sumably had in mind, Congress opponents like Radhanath Das and Pramath RanjanThakur.

Mandal proceeded to clarify the misinformation disseminated amongst the Dalitpublic about his organisation. Reprising the context for the Muslim Leagues call-ing for the Day of Direct Actionnamely, their exclusion from the proceedingsof the Cabinet Mission thus farhe specifically emphasised the ongoing nation-wide Poona Satyagraha, and the various protests in East Bengal that have been

56 The Nationalist, 14 September 1946.57 It is singular that Mandal did not frontally address the Calcutta riots in his autobiography. A

lacuna of such major proportions will likely be read as an admission of guilt. Alternatively, givenwhat he does focus on in the manuscript, one might also interpret this absence as reflecting a funda-mentally different set of priorities that could not but reject the overwhelming communal significanceof the prolonged event that was Partition.

58 Jagaran, Phedareshan Sabhapatir Bibriti.


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mentioned earlier on in this chapter. It was in this context and this context alone,that the Scheduled Castes Federations participation with the Muslim League inprotest ought to have acquired meaning. Commenting specifically on the Calcuttariots, he made the bald and categorical assertion that even though these riots hadcommunal overtones, this was not at all a communal war: Even if these riots ap-pear communal, this is not a communal warthis was simply a political battlebetween the Congress and the Muslim League.

Mandal characterised the opportunistic claim that the vast majority of peopleinvolved in the Calcutta riots were Scheduled Castes as but a ploy to pit themagainst the Muslims. Dalits, he contended, had nothing to gain from enmity withthe Muslims, who in economic and political terms, stood on essentially the samefooting as they did. This was of particular significance, again, in the context oftheir exclusion from the Cabinet Mission, and the unwillingness to recognise theDalits as a minority community.

Mandals contentions thus ran in direct contrast to the predominant thrust ofHindu public opinion. Birat Chandra Mandal, President of the Depressed ClassesAssociation, for instance, averred in the context of the soon-to-be-nominated in-terim government, that A large number of Scheduled Castes residing in Calcuttabustees have been killed. At Belliaghata in Calcutta, the house of Babu SatishChandra Bairagi, a follower of Dr. Ambedkar has been burnt to ashes.59 The im-plication being that even Ambedkarites were not spared the wrath of Muslimrioters. Dalit participation in the Calcutta riots, or their victimhood in the same,was thus harnessed towards conflicting perceptions on extant political contexts.For some, communal violence effected a certain sublation of caste-difference.

The most notable aspect of Mandals statement, however, was his declarationof a policy of neutrality with regard to the violence in Calcutta, and his urgingDalits to adopt the same. He hoped that both Hindu and Muslim leaders wouldrefrain from trying to engage them against the other community, and that Dalitsthemselves would not respond to such exhortations. In closing, he made a pleato their leadership, activists, students and general populace, to bear in mind thefuture political and economic welfare of their community, and remain aloof fromthe battles being waged between other political parties.

Despite the overall tenor of Mandals statement, he could not but have beenpainfully aware that Dalits had in fact been key participants and victims in theviolence that brought the city to its knees. Nevertheless, keeping his own politicaland ideological commitments in mind, he bracketed the full implications of hiscommunity being made into fodder for stakes of which he was hardly in control.As his arguments might suggest, he would have been only too cognisant of theirony that Dalit participation and suffering in the riots bolstered the moral capitalof Congress claim for Partition.

59 Hindustan Standard, 27 August 1946.




The Interim Government

Even as news of the Calcutta riots triggered similar, if not more appallinglybrutal waves of mass violence elsewhere in Bengal and other Indian provinces, inOctober 1946, Mandal was nominated by the Muslim League to join the InterimGovernment as the Law Minister. This selection is generally viewed as the Leaguescynical attempt to retaliate against the Congress for including Muslims amongsttheir own list of nominated representatives. If one were to adopt a somewhatmore sympathetic reading of the matter however, and not interpret all such ges-tures as though they were insincere, one would have to contend with the verygenuine sense of gratitude that Dalits all over the country felt towards Jinnah andthe League for this choice. Expressions of such were on display in processionsand demonstrations taken out all over the countryfrom Agra, Fatehgarh, toCalcutta, Delhi, Bombay and Nagpur.60 Jinnah addressed a gathering of about3,000 Scheduled Caste men who went to the League leaders house on 16 Octoberto thank him for including their representative in the new central governmentthat, It is easy to make promises and then forget them, but I believe in action, andI assure you that I shall never fail to do for you whatever lies in my power.... Headded: I am your friend, and I shall always be your friend. I did my very best forthe Scheduled Castes at the Round Table Conference, and this matter is on actualrecord.61 Note, by contrast, that Mandal recalled how when his entry to the In-terim Government was being celebrated by the Federation, the caste Hindus ofBengal responded with limitless malice and adverse criticism. Newspapers thatostentatiously displayed their progressiveness published pieces containing opin-ions about Mandal that as a measure of caste-hatred put the violent black maliceof the whites of South Africa and the negro animosity of one class of whites inAmerica to shame.62

At a press interview on 16 October, Mandal felt that an injustice was done tothe Scheduled Castes by the British Cabinet Mission, and that Congress has beenundone by this act of the Muslim League. I am grateful to Mr. Jinnah, for hisoffering a seat to the Scheduled Castes Federation out of the Muslim Leaguesquota.... He would represent the All-India Scheduled Castes Federation whichcommands the support of 90 per cent of the Scheduled Castes in India. Congresscaptured a large number of seats because of the existence of the Poona Pact,which provided joint electorates for the Scheduled Castes. That was no indicationthat the Scheduled Castes supported Congress.63

60 File No. 191/46, WBSA.61 Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3563 from the Press Information Bureau,

New Delhi, 18 October 1946).62 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 167.63 Information Department, India Office, (Telegram A.3561 from the Press Information Bureau,

New Delhi, 17 October 1946).


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At another press interview the following day, he elaborated his stand:

Although I have the cause of the Scheduled Castes deepest at heart, my firstduty must be to the Muslim League which has taken up our cause. Secondly,I will work for the betterment of the whole country without considering caste,creed or province. Thirdly, I will work for the betterment of the position of theScheduled Castes. Our cause is nearest my heart, and I shall work continuallyto eradicate the many injustices under which we now suffer. ParticularlyI shall work to change the unfairness of the position of the Scheduled Castes inregard to the primary and general elections.64

Nehru and Gandhi were hardly pleased with Mandals nomination. Nehru con-fided to Wavell: I think I owe it to you to tell you privately and personally thatI regret deeply the choice the Muslim League has made. That choice itself indi-cates a desire to have conflict rather that to work in cooperation. This is espe-cially evident in their choice of a member of the Scheduled Classes.65 And Gandhi,for his part, held forth at one of his prayer meetings that, he could not sense anygenerosity in Mandals nomination, especially when he read what was happen-ing in Eastern Bengal. A man like himself ought to be glad, they might say, thatanother seat had been given to a Harijan. But he would be deceiving himself andMr. Jinnah if he said so.66

That Nehru and Gandhi hardly looked kindly upon, far from welcomingMandals nomination, speaks to their willingness to accommodate his concerns.Moreover, the view of Mandal as a Muslim League representative on his nomina-tion seriously flattens the distinctiveness of his political stance. At a Federationmeeting in Calcutta in May 1947 for instance, he countered claims that he wasurging conversion to Islam by asking that if this were in fact the case, why was he(along with the Federation) demanding separate electorates and an independentpolitical existence.67

In his statements excerpted above, Mandal once again gestured at the problemof how the electoral arrangements agreed to under the Poona Pact could act as an

64 Information Department, India Office, (Telegram A.3563 from the Press Information Bureau,New Delhi, 18 October 1946. Sekhar Bandyopadhyay omits from his use of this source, everythingfrom Our cause is nearest my heart... onwards, as well as Although I have the cause of the ScheduledCastes deepest at heart... This enables the, in my view, unsubstantiated argument that Mandal seemedto be more keen on pleasing his patron than serving his community. Bandyopadhyay, Transfer ofPower, p. 932. Other such puzzling assertions include that Mandal was allegedly at one pointAmbedkars solitary supporter in Bengal. See Bandyopadhyay, Partition and the Ruptures,p. 461.

65 Letter from J. Nehru to A. Wavell, 15 October 1946.66 Information Department, India Office, (Telegram A.3561 from the Press Information Bureau,

New Delhi, 17 October 1946).67 Jagaran, 17 May 1947.




appropriate mechanism for accurately gauging Scheduled Caste political opin-ion, and by extension, the question of whether the Congress could claim the rightto represent the Dalits. This question of representativeness, importantly, had abearing on who exactly demanded Partition in Bengal. For instance, the follow-ing categorical assertion by Sarat Chandra Bose, (one of the few Congressmenwho held against the Partition of Bengal) in a letter to none other than VallabhbhaiPatel, might temper the assumption that the vast majority of Dalits had fallen inline with the majority Hindu opinion in favour of Partition: ...having been inclose touch with public opinion both in West and East Bengal I can say that itis not a fact that Bengali Hindus unanimously demand partition. As far as EastBengal is concerned, there is not the slightest doubt that the overwhelming ma-jority of Hindus are opposed to partition.68 East Bengal, it will be recalled, wasthe heartland of Dalit political mobilisation.

During much of his tenure as Minister of Law in the Interim Government,Mandal was preoccupied in shoring up the Federations various activities acrossthe country. Perhaps this is why he does not feature too prominently in the Trans-fer of Power documents. There are, however, some traces: Wavell wrote ratherdisparagingly to King George VI on 24 February 1947, that Mandal was usuallytravelling around the country to attend Scheduled Caste political meetings; whenhe does come to the Cabinet he is silent or silly.69 What might one take Mandalssilence or silliness, or his absences to signify? His engagements with Mountbattenand his vantage on the transfer of power cast some light on the matter.

Mandal recalled that the cabinet held weekly meetings interspersed with bi-weekly meetings which the Governor-General held with individual ministers.70

Mountbatten was deputed to replace Wavell upon the latters failure to reach anagreement between the Congress and the League. On his first meeting with Mandal,he spent an hour over the designated half-hour, asking him about the history of theScheduled Castes, their political, social and economic situation, and Dr Ambedkar.Mandal remembers Mountbatten having listened to him with great intent. At alater meeting, Mountbatten apparently asked Mandal, Mr. Mandal, wheneveryou come, you only say various things about the interests of the Scheduled Castes,but you dont say much about other matterswhat is the reason for this? Heanswered: The reason is that no other ministers say anything to you about thismatter, they speak about the general conditions of the country. Therefore I haveto speak about these oppressed and persecuted peoples. When Pandit Nehru comes

68 Begum, The Last Decades of Undivided Bengal, p. 176. Boses letter does not, of course, con-clusively demonstrate the proposition.

69 Mansergh and Lumby, no. 460, 24 February 1947, The Transfer of Power, 19427, p. 801. Apersonal comment about Mandal by Wavell is omitted from the official version.

70 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, p. 202, PCSJM.


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and speaks to you of them, then I will no longer have to do so. At this, Mountbattenallegedly began to laugh.71

At several points in his autobiography, Mandal registered a profound uneaseand sense of alienation from the proceedings of the Interim Government, espe-cially with regard to the Partition. He grounded this sentiment in the notion whichhad gained force upon the 1946 election that the Scheduled Castes Federation didnot really represent the Dalits on account of their poor electoral performance,and that the fundamental problematic of the Partition thus turned on reconcilingthe Congress and the League. But the outcome of this election was determined bythe Poona Pact, and as Mandal claimed in his address at the fourth annual con-ference of the Bengal Scheduled Castes Federation, 72 per cent of the ScheduledCaste voters in the primary election had voted for non-Congress candidates whereasthe Congress had only claimed the remaining 28.72 The British had thereby ac-cepted, to his mind, the faulty notion that Partition was primarily about solvingthe communal problem. Mandal thought that he would certainly be consulted onaccount of his seniority, and decided to venture his opinion, irrespective of whetherhe was asked:

But the sad thing is that a day before the date of the next interview, the privatesecretary of the Governor-General telephoned Jogendranaths personal assis-tant and informed him that If H.M. Law has no official business to talk toH.E. then H.E. does not expect him tomorrow. This meant to in exceedinglypolite language forbid Jogendranath from going to meet the Governor-General. Upon hearing this from the personal assistant, there was no limit toJogendranaths sadness and distress. He realised that since Congress had agreedto divide Bharat, the Governor-General no longer did feel the necessity tomeet with him or know his opinion. The chief reason for Jogendranaths mor-tification being that on the logic of dividing India an extremely important matterwould be brought about and despite being a minister in the central govern-ment, not even his opinion was asked.73

Later on, Mandal linked this sense of exclusion to the 1946 elections. TheBritish, in his view, had erroneously looked on the election outcome as furnish-ing conclusive evidence that all Muslims supported the League, and all thoseremaining supported the Congress.

This is why the British government and the Governor-General got the impres-sion that if the founding of the future governance of India was agreed upon by

71 Ibid., pp. 203204.72 Bangiya Pradesik Taphasili Jati Phedareshaner Caturthha Barshik Adhibeshan, 31 December

1946, in Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, dvitiya khanda, p. 121.73 Mandal, Aprakasita Atmakatha, 204205, PCSJM.




these two parties no other disturbance would remain. Thus British Govern-ment and the Viceroy began to discuss all kinds of matters regarding the found-ing of Indias governance with the leaders of these two groups. The demandfor an independent political existence for the Scheduled Castes in the nationallife of Bharat that Dr Ambedkar had made on behalf of the Scheduled CastesFederation no longer survived. The autonomous existence of the ScheduledCastes in the national life of Bharat was annihilated right here. Thus in thefounding of Indian governance or whether India would remain undividedor partitioned, in related discussions, British government or the Viceroy didnot feel the necessity of speaking with Dr Ambedkar. For the very same rea-son, the Viceroy Lord Mountbatten did not perceive the need to talk withJogendranath.74

Here Mandal signals the sheer magnitude of the effect of the elections on Gov-ernments thinking, and thus the inevitable occlusion of the Federations move-ment for political autonomy within the given terms of reference, thereby offeringan entirely new vantage on the matter: that in conjunction from the very outset,the joint-electorate, Congress and Mahasabhas anti-Federation ideology andpractice, and the idea that the transfer of power was essentially about solving thecommunal problem, fundamentally determined their defeat. Telling perhaps, thaton the day of Mandals departure for Karachi as first speaker of the Governmentof Pakistan, 5 August 1947, he parted ways with Mountbatten after the latterallegedly conceded, What is done is done. We could not help.75

The Possibilities and Limits of the DalitMuslim Alliance

In distinct contrast to his assessment of the Calcutta riotswhich he characterisedas a political battle between the Congress and the Leagueafter touring EastBengal in October 1946 to urge calm upon various localities, Mandal assertedthat it was fantastic to impute political motives behind the recent outbreak, andlink political parties with the disturbances. It was an uprising of violent elementspure and simple, and nothing but sheer lawlessness and the activities of the goondaelements are responsible. No political parties are involved.76 This was also partlythe message conveyed in a joint communiqu co-signed by Khwaja Nazimuddin,Fazlur Rahman, Choudhuri Moazzem Hossain, Abul Hashim, JogendranathMandal, Rasik Lal Biswas, Bholanath Biswas and Dwarika Nath Baruri. In a pleato Muslims and Dalits all over Bengal, they reasoned that their political alliancehad no value if their communities were to forsake living together peaceably and

74 Ibid., pp. 23132.75 Mandal, Mahapran Jogendranath, caturthha khanda, p. 21.76 Information Department, India Office (Telegram A.3602 from the Press Information Bureau)

New Delhi, 25 October 1946.


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lose sight of their conjoined futures. They warned that Our enemies can instigateMuslims and Scheduled Castes into riots and mayhem, and thus especially hopedthat they would desist from such incitement and keep their two communitiesmutual welfare in mind.77

Various articles and editorials in Jagaran published after the East Bengal riotsemphasised a similar message. Namely, that neither the Muslims nor the Dalitsstood to gain from themthat the only parties that stood to benefit from this vio-lence were the caste Hindu ones, which could exploit the slippage between theirdual identification as both Scheduled Caste and Hindu, and thus marshal suchanimosity, as in Noakhali and Calcutta, towards the alleged irreconcilability ofHindus and Muslims. Speculations were rife, in these articles, that the Congresswas doing its best to exclude the Dalits from their proportionate share in thefuture governance of independent India, even as they sought to speak on theirbehalf, and even as their hired goons proceeded to pit Dalits and Muslims againstone another. Twenty officers of the local Muslim League and Scheduled CastesFederation had circulated An Appeal to the Jhenidah Sub-divisional MuslimLeague and Scheduled Castes Federation, which drawing similar conclusions asarticles in Jagaran, advocated the formation of a joint committee in every policestation, union and villages with the representatives of the Muslims and ScheduledCaste people for the maintenance of peace and order and for the good of bothcommunities.78 Federation and League student leaders maintained correspon-dence to similar effect.79

77 Jagaran, Musolman o Tapashili Sampradayer Prati. This leaflet was distributed as far afield asJessore and Faridpur, and cropped up in the Intelligence Reports of the time. In the Faridpur weeklyconfidential report ending 9 November 1946, next to the last sentence of the report which ran asfollows: It is, therefore, not unlikely that their enemies will try to bring a disruption among them; soit warns member of both communitiesthe Muslim and the Scheduled Caste (sic)to refrain fromkilling each other, the District Superintendent wrote, But not Caste Hindus!!a significantomissionhas the leaflet come to notice elsewhere? File No. 717D/46 (Muslim League), SerialNo. 270, Kolkata, West Bengal State Archives. Interestingly, the Hindusthan published a piece inresponse to the Federation and Leagues pamphlet entitled Satans Policy of Division that landedthe paper in legal trouble because the article in question, in the local governments view, tended topromote feelings of enmity between the Hindus and Muslims. The article was written in condemnationof an entire series of events to which Mandal was central, and which culminated in the Federationand Leagues issuing their joint-statement. As N.C. Chatterjee, one of the supreme leaders of thePartition agitation and legal counsel for Hindusthan described, the article had been written to combatthe two-fold propaganda(a) to detach the Scheduled Castes from the main body of the Hindu com-munity; and (b) to point out the mischievous character of the attempt to drive a wedge amongst theHindu community. Amrita Bazar Patrika, Security Demand on Hindusthan.

78 File No. 717D/46, WBSA.79 File No. 191/46, WBSA. The entire outlook on communal violence in this archive is utterly

alien to and irreconcilable with the story of Partition and concomitant riots that Indian nationalisthistoriography tells.




A pamphlet circulating in Dacca district in mid-January, 1947, drafted by theMuslim League Revolutionary Workers Association in Calcutta presented an analy-sis of the ongoing violence which illuminates how they looked upon the alliancebetween Dalits and Muslims. As such, the pamphlet recapitulated in detail thereasons for their solidarity in their roles as the primary producers in agrarian rela-tions, overlapping with Mandals own rationalisations for the forging of the same,though with obvious and crucial differences. Titled Anti-Muslim feelings of thecaste-Hindus and Calcutta riots, the writer chastised the meanness displayed bycaste-Hindus during the Calcutta carnage and chalked out an aggressive pro-gram of complete boycott of the caste-Hindus by joint union of the Muslims andthe Scheduled Castes with a view to bring the caste-Hindus down to their ownlevel.80 Significantly, the association laid responsibility for the breach of peaceduring the Calcutta riots with Congress activists, emphasising how Jinnah hadinsisted that the protests on the Day of Direct Action be peaceful. Exulting inthe Muslim response to the open attack and brutal torture perpetrated by theCongress the pamphlet reprised the broader context of freedom from British rule,and the attendant question of how a future state might be democratically gov-erned by representatives of its communities. What is the significance of the free-dom of a country? It is the freedom of the poor and down-trodden masses andtheir peace and prosperity. Who are these masses in India [sic]. Muslims and afew other low caste Hindus (Namasudras). So in this triangular fight (British,Hindu, Muslim)we really deserve to be freed. A revolution cannot be completeleaving aside the poor downtrodden people.

The pamphlet subsequently charted a programme for the Muslim LeagueRevolutionary Workers Association. Proposing the formation of Union DefenceCommittees composed solely of Muslims and Scheduled Castes workers of eachward and union, these committees would control their jurisdiction according tothe following directions. Primarily, they will keep no connection with the casteHindus. Business, revenue, land tenure, discussion and even association with thecaste Hindus are prohibited. They may only be called at any time of necessity tonotify them regarding orders of the committee. The committees would arrangefor the market and other places of trade and commerce to be under the joint con-trol of Muslims and Dalits.

In this projected utopia, caste Hindus would not receive more than a quartershare of the produce of the barga land which they would have to harvest andcarry themselves. Poor men are not their servants. If they [the caste Hindu land-owner] were to take the land away, the cultivator occupier would cultivate itforcibly.

Rice, foodstuff and other commodities of trade are under our control. Theymust not be sold to the caste Hindus. We shall starve them to death. There will

80 Anti-Muslim feelings of the caste-Hindus and Calcutta Riots, File No. 717D/46, WBSA.


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be no necessity for killing them. Rice must not be sold to the caste Hinduseven if they pay `5 for a seer. If we carry on for two months only in this wayyou will find that they have come down to the same status with us. Then theywill not accost a Muslim or a Namasudra as thou (in contempt). Then thecountry will be free. If any prominent man secretly visits the caste Hinduswith a view to getting advantage for himself, on receipt of information, thatman must be boycotted from the society and he must be insulted everywhere.81

As an instantiation of the desired policy changes, the pamphlet seized on thatemblem of Bengali labourjuteproceeding to discuss regulation of the juteindustry given that the jute-growers of Bengal are mainly Muslims andNamasudras. It described the present situation where Hindu Marwaris cheatedthe cultivators by purchasing jute at `10 or 12 per maund (1 maund is approxi-mately 37.32 kg) and selling the same at `100, thereby sucking the blood of thecultivators. The cultivator had no

dwaipayan sen - no matter how, jogendranath had to be defeated

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