Vol. II. Issue. III September 2011 - The Criterion: An International ...

www.the-criterion.com The Criterion: An International Journal in English ISSN 0976-8165
Communal Riots:
Distinct episodes of communal riots have often troubled the
urban life in Calcutta. Like Amitav Ghosh in his The Shadow Lines, Amit
Chaudhuri in his Freedom Song also represents Calcutta as a city of riots,
curfews, and communal feuds and turmoil. But there is a difference in this
regard between the two novels, for while Ghosh’s novel highlights the riots of
the 1970s in the city of Calcutta, Chaudhuri’s novel represents the riots in the
city in the last decade of the 20 th century. In fact, Riots in the history of the
city of Calcutta are nothing new. Between 1911 and 1992 the city witnessed at
least six major riots most of which erupted due to communal issues. There was
a riot between the Hindus and the Muslims in 1911 in Calcutta, and again
another one on 19 th February, 1921 between the Hindus and the Anglo-Indians
of the then Calcutta. The city also witnessed a large-scale of Hindu-Muslim
riot in the month of September 1918 which was caused by, to quote Suranjan
Das, “the economic marginalization of Muslims [by the Marwaris] in Calcutta
. . .” (Das, 75). Then there occurred another communal riot in 1926 caused
similarly by “. . . a significant increase in the general Muslim antagonism
towards the Marwaris, an anger intensified by the economic boycott of
Muslims by the Marwais” (Das, 75).
Das also records that “Between 1911 and 1921 alone, nearly 90,000 people
were displaced from their slums, most of whom were Muslims” (Das, 75).
Then, there was the Great Calcutta Action Day or the Direct Action Day of 16
August 1946 (just one year before the Independence) that continued in the city
for a whole week. Suranjan Das in his essay “The 1992 Calcutta Riot in
Historical Continuum: A Relapse into ‘Communal Fury’?” (Das, 283) puts the
number of casualties within the first three days of the riot as exceeding 4,000,
with more than 10,000 residents left homeless in the city. The communal riot
again relapsed in the city when Bangladesh got its independence in 1971. This
heinous communal violence between the Hindus and the Muslims in Calcutta
recurred once again towards the end of 1992 and in the beginning of 1993
after the historical demolition of Babri masjid in Uttar Pradesh on December
6, 1992, and serial bomb blasts in Bombay (Mumbai) in March 1993. A huge
communal turmoil appeared in Mumbai and whole of the nation immediately
after the serial blasts which resulted in immeasurable bloodshed nationwide.
The city of Calcutta too could not able to appease its people in such a
disturbing circumstance. As N. L. Gupta has indicated in his book Communal
Riots in India (2000), in Calcutta the death toll was at least 9 (Gupta, 307).
Amit Chaudhuri’s Freedom Song, however, has recorded the latter two major
communal riots of Calcutta and not all the historical riots that erupted in the
city. There are some episodes in the novel that refer to the communal violence
of Calcutta in 1992 and 1993. In some of the conversations between Khuku
and Mini in the novel, Chaudhuri tries to represent the riot stricken city of
Calcutta during the last decade of the 20 th century. In one such conversation,
Mini while traveling with Khuku in a car down Southern Avenue and upon
Vol. II. Issue. III 201 September 2011