Cows in Clive Street

Monday, Sep. 02, 1946

Except for an occasional murder, quiet returned to stricken Calcutta last week, but fear lingered. The death toll of last fortnight’s Hindu-Moslem rioting, which may never be finally totaled, exceeded 4,000. While the city’s poor went hungry, food rotted on loading platforms. Both Hindus and Moslems, afraid of hostile neighbors, jammed the huge Howrah railway station, mobbed the trains.

TIME Correspondent Dave Richardson cabled: "Calcutta’s three millions will take some time to be convinced that terrorism is really over. They act as though they had been through a terrific bombing and expect another soon. Nine out of ten business houses and shops which survived plundering are still closed tightly.

"The drivers of the few taxis which have returned to the streets cast furtive looks at the countless charred, gutted vehicles, and will not go near the recently dangerous areas for any price. Even though most of the bodies have been taken away, the unholy sweet stench of death lingers in many neighborhoods. Streets are still stained with blood. Cows wander aimlessly through Clive Street—the Wall Street of India—stopping in the shadow of its high buildings to munch at scattered garbage."

"Direct Action Day," proclaimed by Moslem League Boss Mohamed Ali Jinnah, touched off the disaster. But much blame for what actually happened was shifted to Huseyn Shabad Suhrawardy, head of the Bengal provincial government. Chief Minister Suhrawardy, 52, is a slick, Oxford-educated Moslem who has a bad reputation for black-marketeering in his hunger-ridden province. Instead of warning against violence on "Direct Action Day," Suhrawardy proclaimed a holiday in Bengal, which had the effect of putting his followers on the streets; and he threatened Bengal’s secession from India if the Moslems were not placated by the British.

Meanwhile the Viceroy, Viscount Wavell, appointed the Executive Council which is to take over next month from the present "caretaker" government, pending India’s full dominion status. Five of the 14 seats were reserved for Moslems, but since Jinnah’s Moslem League has refused to participate, Wavell appointed nonLeague Moslems. One of these, Sir Shafa’at Ahmad Khan, who clung to his British title and resigned from the League three weeks ago, was attacked apparently by co-religionists at Simla at week’s end, stabbed seven times, hospitalized.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0 ,9171,803920,00.html