Noakhali, East Bengal (now Bangladesh), 1946: Hindu Genocide
The testimonies of Two Hindu Women, Jyotirmoyee Das and Ramanath Das’s wife, as obtained from one Hindu man, Sourindrakumar Basu:
On Friday, on the day of the celebration of Goddess Laxmi, the goddess of wealth, several people invaded our (Hindu) household and neighborhood with rods, spear, and two guns, and all of us women went to the roof. The goons set fire to everything in the surrounding area. Monindrababu, Kanu Ray (son of Pyari Ray), all Hindus asked for pardon; but as soon as Monindranath went near the goons, he was cut up into two; they put a spear through Kanu’s chest. Then brick pieces were showered on us and one of the narrators here got hit in an eye. Since then the men and women were asking from the rooftop to be pardoned. To this the crowd yelled back “Come down first”.
Then one of the narrator woman said, “Everything is burning, how can we come down?” One of the Muslims goons cut a coconut tree and used it to climb the roof top and said, “Are you guys going down or not?” Several of us agreed and demanded that there should not be any torture on us. Then they told us to come down without fear and helped us down. After that they took away all the jewelry from our bodies.”
Before that they were beating the men. They were looking for Rajenbabu. Rajenbabu was covered with banana leaves. They found him. Rajenbabu’s wife said, you must first kill me before even touching him. Some of them held his wife and he was brought down, and a small arrow was shot that hit his bums. He said his head was reeling and that he could not stand. Then Rajenabu was brought under the mango tree and Golam Sarwar was standing twenty feet away and shot at him and the bullet hit his chest. Then his head was chopped off. The Golam Sarwar whistled everyone in the village. When all this was happening, the other men were brought down and killed one by one. Rajenbabu’s eight-year-old was thrown into fire but he did not die, he somehow got saved. Then Golam Sarwar started to leave and all the women of the house followed him. When walking behind him I saw that Nagenbabu was cut into pieces and half of his body was kept in a rice bowl. Seeing us, Golam Sarwar said, “Why are these women here, let them go back to their houses.” But all our houses were burnt. So, we had to stay in different Hindu and Muslim houses. In the morning, we returned home and took refuge in a small room.
In the morning some Muslims came with cane baskets and cut off the heads of some Hindu men and put them in the cane baskets and took them. Kanu babu was severely injured and was lying in a shrub. They could not see him. At night they heard his groans and the people of Majumdar household took him away. The next Monday all the corpses were removed. Kanu babu passed away that day and they buried him. After this one English gentleman, named Duffrin, came and took away the wives and daughters of Rajenbabu; but he refused to take anyone else with him.
After 7 days the cops showed up from Lamchar. In this killing spree the roof collapsed and three died from that. All others were killed.
[In the midst of all of this, Nomita, Khuku, the daughter of Kalachand was abducted]. (From Satchallisher Diary, Diary of 1947, Punaschcha, Kolkata, 1914).
