Calcutta 78% Hindus, 20% Muslims
Chief Minister of West Bengal: P. Chandra Sen, Congress Party, July 1962–March 1967
Jamshedpur 81% Hindus, 9% Muslims
Chief Minister of Bihar: K. B. Sahay, Congress Party, October 1963–March 1967
Rourkela 84% Hindus, 9% Muslims
Chief Minister of Orissa: Biren Mitra, Congress Party, October 1963–February 1965
Ghastly violence engulfed the cities of Calcutta (West Bengal), Jamshedpur (Bihar), and Rourkela (Orissa). These riots were part of a cross-national (affecting India, Pakistan and East Pakistan) chain of events: the theft of a relic hair of the Prophet Mohammed from the Hazratbal mosque in Srinagar (Kashmir) on December 27, 1963 provoked indignation in Pakistan and East-Pakistan (now Bangladesh). Protest marches and violence against the Hindu minorities took place in the cities of Khulna and Jessore (East Pakistan) on January 2 and 3, 1964. This led to retaliation against Muslims in Calcutta and in West Bengal, which in turn kindled events in Dacca and Naryangunj (East Pakistan), where minority communities (of Hindus, Christians, and Buddhists) were heavily targeted (although, ultimately, the holy relic was returned on January 4). According to the 1965 Report of the Indian Commission of Jurists on Recurrent Exodus of Minorities from East Pakistan and Disturbances in India thousands of Hindu families left East Pakistan and sought refuge in India after January 5. The Indian government arranged for special trains to deliver them to the states of Bihar, Orissa, and Madhya Pradesh where they were to be received. As these trains crossed through Indian towns, the narrative of the atrocities that Hindus had suffered in East Pakistan spread, triggering anti-Muslim riots. Jamshedpur (Bihar) and Rourkela (Orissa) were particularly affected.
In Calcutta, troubles started on January 10. The army was called in on January 11 and left on January 18. In the period leading up to January 19, the Jurists’ Commission reported 104 dead, of whom 39 had been killed in shooting by police. Other estimates put the death toll at 400. On March 16, a day before the hartal (general strike) organized by the “Save Pakistan Minorities Committee” was to take place, a group of one-hundred Muslim textile workers was assaulted. Thirteen of them lost their lives.
In Jamshedpur, violence flared up on March 19. The army had to be called in on March 21. The official death toll amounted to 51 dead but the actual figure was much higher.
In Rourkela, rioting started on March 16 when inhabitants attempted to feed Hindu refugees travelling in a special train that had stopped in the town. Riots started when a Hindu refugee vomited after having eaten bread allegedly offered by a Muslim baker. A rumor spread that Muslims were attempting to poison Hindu refugees. Violence propagated from the train station to various slums in the town and to adjacent villages. Hindu mobs (mainly Punjabis, Bengalis, and Oriyas) joined local adivasis (tribes) in the killing of Muslims. The Muslim’s economic upward-mobility from the 1960s onwards, along with competition for jobs in the steel industry, had indeed created resentment among Hindus and adivasis. Activists of the BJS and RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, National Volunteers Association) are said to have stirred up hatred. The police proved inefficient and the protection they offered, insufficient. German engineers who had been working in the steel industry of Rourkela were powerless. Official reports put the death figure at 53 (the Jurists’ Commission reported 70 deaths), but according to S. K. Gosh, who was then Orissa’s Additional Inspector General of Police, the violence in Rourkela alone, which lasted for 15 days, claimed two thousand (mostly - Muslims) lives. Other reported figures, probably exaggerated, put the total at five thousand deaths.
In all, while official records estimate that the violence claimed 134 lives in the three towns - Calcutta, Rourkela, and Jamshedpur - the actual death toll actually came to several thousands. This tragic chain of events forced the home ministers of India and Pakistan to meet in Delhi on April 1964 to restore order.
***(Feldman 1969: 149); ***(Schermerhon 1976: 5); ***(Saxena 1984: 53); ***(Ghosh 1987: 210–212); ***(Bernard 1994: 188–189); ***(Chatterji 1995: 18–21); ***(Parry and Struempell 2008); ***(Ul - Huda 2009)