Shortly after the Great Calcutta Riot in 1946 Gandhi was discussing the situation in Bengal with his British friend Horace Alexander, and the conversation switched into the Prime Minister of this province, Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy. According to Alexander’s account, “I think I spoke of some of his good qualities, which I had noticed during those earlier years. ‘Do you realize that he is a bad man?’ asked Gandhi. I replied ‘Yes, I daresay; but I am not quite sure what you mean by that. We are mostly partly bad and also partly good, aren’t we?’ ‘Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde’ he commented”.
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy’s connection to Kolkata’s red-light and central trading districts—specifically Sonagachi, Bowbazar, and the surrounding areas—is deeply intertwined with his role in local trade unionism, civil supplies during wartime, and the highly polarized politics of 1946.
Reference
TOMASZ FLASIŃSKI (The Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland): Dr. Jekyll, Mr Hyde or Bengali Hamlet? Hussein Shaheed Suhrawardy as the last Prime Minister of undivided Bengal.
