Gopal Mukhopadhyay, belonged to a family of nationalists. He was an ardent supporter of Netaji & used to abhor Gandhian non-violence. He was a nephew of Anukul Chandra Mukhopadhyay, a nationalist thinker &professor of philosophy who was awarded with Padma Bhushan in 1964.

Gopal Mukhopadhyay used to run his family Butcher shop & hence was popularly known as Gopal ‘patha’ (‘patha’ means male goat in Bengali). Bcos of his business he used to interact closely with Muslim traders. From his early days, Gopal was a philanthropist, helping ppl in distress

Gopal Mukhopadhyay raised the Bharat Jatiya Bahini, a nationalist organisation, to help people in distress & carry out relief works during calamities.
On the night of 17 Aug, 1946 when massacre of Hindus started, he & his Bharat Jatiya Bahini resisted the attacks by Muslims.

Gopal & his associates chalked out detailed action plans to stop Muslim attacks on Hindus. Hearing the self-defence strategy being chalked by Gopal, many offered to help. Marwari traders of Burrabazar offered financial help. Backsmiths made swords, spears &other weapons overnight

It was at this crucial juncture, when Suhrawardy’s and the Muslim League’s diabolical plan of killing Hindus and reducing them to a hopeless minority in Calcutta and neighbouring districts was coming to fruition, that Gopal Chandra Mukhopadhyay emerged on the scene.

Hindu youths counter-attacked with such ferocity that the Muslim League had to flee. Many were killed. Emboldened by their success in taking on & defeating the Islamist attackers. They did not, however, touch Muslim women & children or the aged & the infirm.

Gopal Mukhopadhyay was never communal. He simply organised self-defence of Hindus by organising Hindu youths to fight back Islamist aggression. He gave shelter to the homeless and widows and stopped them from getting killed or converted.

The Hindu fightback was led by Gopal Mukhopadhyay & likes of Basanta, a famous wrestler, but it was non-Bengali Hindus from Bihar & United Provinces who provided the muscle. Financed by Marwari traders, they fought back valiantly &succeeded in reversing d tide in favour of Hindus

It would be relevant here to examine what course history would have taken had Gopal Mukhopadhyay not organised a resistance on 18 August 1946. Calcutta’s population at the time was about 20 lakh. Of them, there were 12.8 lakh Hindus & 6.6 lakh Muslims.

By 17 August night, an estimated 7,000 Hindus had been massacred by the Islamists &that had triggered a massive exodus of Hindus, from Kolkata. Had the killings continued for 2 more days, more Hindus would have died & exodus combined would have come down to an estimated 7.8 lakh.

The Muslim League had also planned to bring in Muslims from Calcutta’s hinterlands to take over properties left by Hindus who had fled or were killed. They had plans to bring in at least 4 lakh Muslims to settle in Calcutta in the industrial & economically advanced districts.

Thus, the plan was to make Calcutta and its rich and industrially (as well as economically) advanced neighbouring districts into Muslim-majority areas. That would have strengthened the Muslim League’s claim for inclusion of Calcutta and these districts in East Pakistan.

For d past several years, Hindu Samhati has been organising a rally on 16th Aug to commemorate Gopal Mukhopadhyay’s life. Encouragingly, the number of ppl participating in the rally started to grow. Some Hindus, at least r remembering history.
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