Word: calcutta
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Meanwhile, saber-swinging mobs in the Noakhali district of east Bengal, where Moslems outnumber Hindus 5-to-1, burned, looted and massacred on a scale surpassing even the recent Calcutta riots. In eight days an estimated 5,000 were killed, with scores of Hindu girls abducted...
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...
...Ramadan for "Direct Action Day" against Britain's plan for Indian independence (which does not satisfy the Moslems' old demand for a separate Pakistan). Though direct, the action was supposed to be peaceful. But before the disastrous day was over, blood soaked the melting asphalt of sweltering Calcutta's streets...
Rioting Moslems went after Hindus with guns, knives and clubs, looted shops, stoned newspaper offices, set fire to Calcutta's British business district. Hindus retaliated by firing Moslem mosques and miles of Moslem slums. Thousands of homeless families roamed the city in search of safety and food (most markets had been pilfered or closed). Police blotters were filled with stories of women raped, mutilated and burned alive. Indian police, backed by British Spitfire scouting planes and armored cars, battled mobs of both factions. Cried Hindu Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru (who is trying to form an interim government despite the Moslems...