THE SITUATION MUST BE MET - Jinnah's Direct Action Day and its legacy SUNANDA K. DATTA-RAY A blazing delivery van near the Statesman office, Calcutta, 1946
We returned to Calcutta on Direct Action Day, August 16, 1946. As a child of nine, I had little grasp of politics, but I remember the mounting nervousness, so different from the tranquillity of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram we had left behind, as the Madras Mail steamed towards Howrah. Gory reports were brought to us at each halt. Blood was flowing like water. Shops were looted, houses fired. No one was safe. The woman with whom we shared our compartment exploded in hysterics. She lived in an Old Ballygunge rajbari, with bustees nearby. Her aged mother and young daughter must have met, she wept, a fate worse than death. The Telegraph Sunday, June 19, 2005
We returned to Calcutta on Direct Action Day, August 16, 1946. As a child of nine, I had little grasp of politics, but I remember the mounting nervousness, so different from the tranquillity of the Sri Aurobindo Ashram we had left behind, as the Madras Mail steamed towards Howrah. Gory reports were brought to us at each halt. Blood was flowing like water. Shops were looted, houses fired. No one was safe. The woman with whom we shared our compartment exploded in hysterics. She lived in an Old Ballygunge rajbari, with bustees nearby. Her aged mother and young daughter must have met, she wept, a fate worse than death. The Telegraph Sunday, June 19, 2005
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