Eighty years ago this week savage communal violence erupts in India

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Jinnah's Muslim League staged a "Day of Action" involving a general strike and protest meetings to sustain claims to an independent Pakistan which was emerging as key demand in the process of Indian independence. This rapidly degenerated into extreme communal violence  in Calcutta. Both Hindu and Moslem communities participated, Some thousands were killed and corpses lay unburied for days. Five British army battalions and four of the Indian army helped restore order.

Led by Andrei Zhdanov the General Secretary of the communist Party  the Soviet regime launched a campaign (known as the Zhdanovoschkina) to extend complete ideological conformity into every form of art, writing in particular. Henceforth all art was deemed to have support for the Stalin regime as its sole purpose. In the first line it targeted two literary magazines Zvezda and Leningrad. The poet Anna Akhmatova was singled out for criticism.

The US and the UK staged a concerted open protest at the Yugoslav communist regime.  The US made a formal protest against the attack on an unarmed transport aircraft which was forced down, killing one person. The British publicly contradicted the Yugoslav account of a clash between troops triggered by a Yugoslav incursion across the Morgan line of demarcation. The underlying dispute was over Tito's claim to the city of Trieste.


Comments

  1. Anonymous17 August 2026 at 10:05

    Its very wise to consider that today's news shocking though it is isnt new....

    ReplyDelete

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