Battleground Calcutta

It was not, maybe, our war. But World War II , the biggest conflict in human history, did not spare Kolkata (Calcutta, back then), during the last few years of British rule in India. Surprisingly few Kolkatans, however, are aware about the several important points of interest regarding the war that lie scattered around the city.

Though the British had shifted the Indian capital to Delhi in 1911, Calcutta remained an important hub for trade and commerce, unofficially called the “second capital” for obvious reasons. It was probably because of this that made the city face the wrath of the war, although it was not in the frontline.

During World War II, the British never perceived any threat to Calcutta from enemies, but things changed rapidly after the fall of Burma. From bombings by the Japanese to blackouts to avoid them and aircraft taking off from Red Road to mass exodus and famine, the City of Joy saw it all between 1939 and 1945.

“Calcutta was not a warfront, but it served as a hub to feed the war,” says historian Jyotirmoy Pal Chaudhuri. “Missions like ‘Over The Hump’ by American soldiers and supply of oil from Budge Budge to China through a pipeline made Calcutta an important city during the war.”

Explaining the ‘Over The Hump’ effort by the Americans, Kaushik Roy, a professor of history at Jadavpur University, says: “Bombers with weapons and oil as supplies used to take off from Asansol and Panagarh and fly over the Himalayas all the way to Kunming in China, where Chiang Kai-shek had made his base. It was during this mission that Red Road was used as a runway.”

There is hardly any data that shows Calcutta in a state of strife during the early years of World War II, but after the Japanese conducted surprise airstrikes — first in 1942 and then in 1943 — things changed for the city.

The Japanese wanted to cut off the supply lines the city provided and the targets were well planned-out. The first strikes, between December 20 and 24, 1942, saw bombs falling in Dalhousie and adjoining areas.

A recent walk, organized by Sahapedia as a part of the Indian Heritage Walk Festival, talked about the exact locations of where the bombs fell and the possible targets.

Heading the walk, Shaikh Sohail of Breakfree Trails said: “Blogger Subhadip Mukherjee once noticed a plaque remembering the members of the Balloon Squadron of the British Army and upon research, a UK-based committee provided him with a handful of photographs of the squadron. Further studying the topic, he also came across a rare video that showed the places where the bombs fell.”

It is this that led Mukherjee to go out in search of the exact locations where the Japanese bombs fell. Walking through the streets of Dalhousie and occasionally showing photographs of reference, Sohail identified the entrance of Mangoe Lane, the intersection near St Andrew’s Church and the ground at St John’s Church complex as one of the places that were bombed by the Japanese.

Stopping in front of the entrance to Mangoe Lane, Sohail pointed towards the sloping window sills of a building. “It is these that we spotted in the video,” he says, showing walkers an old photograph of the same windows in the background and the damage caused on a building by shrapnel.

A stone’s throw from here is the Central Telegraph Office (CTO), the hub of communications, and an obvious target for the Japanese. “Cutting off the communication lines to the warfront would mean winning half the war for the Japanese, but they missed their target,” Sohail said.

A second bomb fell at the intersection near St Andrew’s Church, and a photograph shows Tobacco House in the background. “There were several reasons behind this target: this intersection had Writers’ Buildings on one side and the American Flying Club on the other. While the former served as the British headquarters of the Air Raid Precaution and anti-war rumours office, the latter was a club visited by the personnel of the American Air Force,” said Sohail.

The walk was also led to St John’s Church and though a good reason to bomb the church could not be found, the church records show that a portion of the building was damaged after a bomb fell on one of its lawns.

Huge balloons also guarded important buildings and structures, such as Howrah bridge. After the 1942 bombings, the British raised a small band of men within the ambit of its army, called the balloon squadron.

Why balloons? Talking about the squadron and its importance, Kolkata Port Trust security adviser Gautam Chakraborti, who is also a heritage enthusiast, said it was a clever defence ploy. “The Japanese planes those days had to dive to a certain level in order to bomb, and helium-filled balloons were placed all along important buildings and also the Howrah bridge. A slight contact with the balloons would make them burst, causing the planes to crash,” he said.

With the Japanese frequenting the city with fresh airstrikes every other day, the British put up defence systems all across the city. Apart from the helium balloons, trenches were built along important roads, buildings like the Victoria Memorial were painted black to avoid bombing, and sirens were put up at important junctions.

“Shrill sirens would split the silence of the night and Calcuttans would know that Japanese aircraft were approaching,” said Roy. “The upper portions of car headlights were painted black, streetlights were covered and people were asked to keep their windows shut with an added protection of covering the bulbs to avoid being bombed.”

Pal Chaudhuri, who was a young lad of eight then, shivers when reminded of a memory from those days. “We were in Kolkata then. One day, we were en route to an invitation in a bus. A few seconds after crossing Maniktala towards Sealdah, the sirens suddenly went off. I remember people scampering here and there to take shelter. We too ran and entered a house. It was December 5, 1943 — the day the port was bombed.”

Until this date, the Japanese used to carry out bombings at night. But, on this day, British intelligence was taken off guard when Japanese aircraft suddenly turned towards Calcutta while on the Chittagong track.

The port (the Kidderpore docks) was the target this time. “As many as 42 people died in the bombing. The main idea of the Japanese was to cut off supply through the waters and cripple British India,” said Chakraborti.

“A main worry for the British was the Tallah tank,” said Pal Chaudhuri. “Being the biggest water supply tank, any damage to it would mean a huge loss. Thus, in order to save it, it is said that grass was planted atop the tank to make it look like an open field from above, thus saving it from being bombed.”

Of course, the terrible aftermath of the war was felt in the form of the great famine in Calcutta and Bengal in 1943. Though the British are blamed for panic hoarding, Roy puts forth a more balanced view.

“Bengal’s agricultural output was always high, but not the per-capita production,” he explains. “It is for this reason that in the 1920s and 30s, rice used to be brought in from Burma to feed the poor of Bengal. After the Japanese took over Burma, the import was stopped. This led to an absolute shortage. Since people of Bengal were rice-eaters, a famine broke out.”

He, however, does not let the British off the hook, blaming them squarely for poor administration. “Punjab was a wheat-producing state. The British could have brought in wheat from there but it did not, probably because it was more important to pamper Punjabis as they were in huge numbers in the British army.”

But there was also a silver lining to the dark cloud of war over the city. The freedom movement, Roy says, got a much-needed impetus. “Even among Bengalis, white men were synonymous with supremacy. Europeans were god-like for many in those days and when the same white men were taking a beating from short-statured Asians, the idea of the British being superior to others slowly faded away.”

Roy also talked about how radio broadcasts from Japan, which the people of the city used to listen to secretly at night, talked about European ladies being made to clean Japanese streets, propagating the idea of Asia for Asians.

There were other reasons too that caused resentment in the average Bengali. “When the Japanese came to Burma, the British seized all the boats of people in the coastal areas and torched them. This was known as the ‘scorched-earth’ policy of the British, where anything perceived as useful to the enemy would be destroyed. This led people to think that if the Japanese entered Calcutta, the British might destroy things in the city as well,” Roy says.

Roy also explained how widespread joblessness affected the so-called “British supremacy”. In 1942, when the Quit India movement was started, at least 57,000 combat troops had to be pulled out of the warfront to block the movement.

“The situation worsened for the British when, in 1944, Subhash Chandra Bose started broadcasting radio messages from Singapore, which made the educated middle-class more aware of the political scenario,” Roy concluded.