Context: As ‘Bengal Files’ Film brings the Great Calcutta Killing back into debate, the figure of Gopal ‘Paantha’ Mukherjee re-enters the spotlight.
Relevance of the Topic: Prelims: About Gopal ‘Paantha’ Mukherjee and his role in Direct Action Day.
Who Was Gopal ‘Paantha’ Mukherjee?
- Born in 1916 in Kolkata’s Bowbazar area, Gopal Mukherjee was part of a middle-class Bengali Hindu family.
- His family ran a meat shop on College Street, which earned him the nickname Paantha (goat, in Bangla).
- Known for his fearless personality, long hair, and commanding presence, he led a local gang that grew into one of the city’s most formidable street organisations by the mid-1940s.
- When Direct Action Day violence broke out, Gopal and his group of over 800 young men mobilised to protect Hindu neighbourhoods from Muslim League mobs. In his own later words, he took up arms “to save the women of his area, to save the people.”
- Family members describe him as inspired by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose, involved in revolutionary groups like the Atma Unnati Samiti, and determined to resist what he saw as the forced incorporation of Bengal into Pakistan.
- However, critics point out that Gopal’s “army” was not a patriotic militia but an extension of Calcutta’s underworld sustained by wrestlers, gamblers, and street enforcers.
In 1947, Mahatma Gandhi visited Calcutta to restore peace and asked people to surrender their arms. Gopal Mukherjee was summoned to meet him. Though he eventually went, he refused to surrender his weapons, telling Gandhi’s aides: “With these arms I saved the women of my area, I saved the people. I will not surrender them.”
Direct Action Day:
- On 16 August 1946, the All-India Muslim League called for “direct action” to push their demand for Pakistan, after the British exit from India.
- In Bengal, where the League was in power under the Chief Minister H. S. Suhrawardy, the call took a violent turn (the Great Calcutta killings).
- What began as a hartal and rally at the Ochterlony Monument (today’s Shahid Minar) spiralled into four days of riots across Calcutta. Between 5,000 and 10,000 people were killed, and thousands more injured.