EAST PAKISTAN RIOTS

1950

Following the Partition of India in 1947, which split the former British Indian empire into dominions of India and Pakistan on the basis of religion, the province of Bengal was also partitioned into a Muslim-majority East Bengal and a Hindu-majority West Bengal. The 1950 East Pakistan riots refers to the massacre of Bengali Hindus by the Bengali Muslims, Pakistani police, and the paramilitary.

A number of Hindu leaders were arrested and journalists were killed in East Pakistan. By March 1950, approximately 75,000 East Bengali Hindu refugees were admitted into the refugee camps of West Bengal. Another 200,000 arrived in Tripura, while 110,000 refugees arrived in the Karimganj district in Assam from the Sylhet district. According to researcher A. Roy, a total of 500,000 Hindus were killed in the massacres and riots, resulting in the exodus of 4.5 million Hindu refugees in India.

ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Agarwal, A. (2019, February 25). Muslim riots of East Bengal in 1950 – 5.6M Hindus massacred or estranged. Hindu Genocide. https://hindugenocide.com/islamic-jihad/muslim-riots-of-east-bengal-in-1950-5-6m-hindus-massacred-or-estranged/

Bandyopadhyay, S. (2011). The minorities in post-partition West Bengal: The riots of 1950. In A. DasguptaM. Togawa, & A. Barkat (Eds.), Minorities and the state: Changing social and political landscape of Bengal (pp. 3-17). SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd, https://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9788132107668.n1

Raghavan, S. (2010). Bengal 1950. War and Peace in Modern India. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230277519_6