Reflections

Lorna Monteith is an old friend. She has written in this blog about the Bow Barracks ( see here ). She, too , is a heroine in her own right. I will post her story sometime later, but for now lets read a eye witness account of the Great Calcutta Killing. Incidentally, the Great Calcutta killing was one of the most horrendous riots that occurred on the eve of Independence. The Muslim League gave a call for Direct Action to obtain Pakistan which led to large scale disturbances with Muslim mobs, with the tacit support of the British Government attacking Hindu localities. The reprisals were even worse than the actions and there was great orgy of killing which ended only after a week when the British masters realized that things were getting out of hand.It was one of the biggest failures of the British and combined with the Bengal Famine and the Partition, made the forties probably the worst decade of the twentieth century for Bengal. All pictures from the website " The Old Indian...