Why You Must Know How ‘Gopal Patha' Saved Kolkata

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Vivek Agnihotri's 'The Bengal Files' may dramatise Gopal Mukherjee's role in August 1946 but that's what is needed after decades of motivated silence.
For all those protesting about the 'wrong" portrayal of Gopal Mukherjee (known in local lore as Gopal Patha or Gopal the Goat as he had a meat shop) in the soon-to-be released film The Bengal Files by Vivek Agnihotri, the long interview that he gave to Andrew Whitehead in 1997 is illuminating. Including the fact that it is the only interview of this key figure of the 'Great" Calcutta Killings triggered by Jinnah's Direct Action Day call on 16 August 1946. Why was he forgotten?
Fifty years passed since those horrific days before, ironically, a Briton came to Kolkata to hear from the man himself what happened. Even Whitehead's silly questions like exactly how many Muslims Mukherjee had killed—entirely missing the point of the events of 16-19 August 1946— shows the extent to which the role of 'Gopal Patha" has been buried or misrepresented since then. And calling him 'secular" now also shows the lingering effects of that ignorance.
The carnage that first saw Hindus being killed by Muslim mobs and then an equally bloody retaliation led by Mukherjee—not against all Muslims but just those who had murdered Hindus—was an early example of a 'targeted response", now used to describe Operation Sindoor. The actions of Gopal Patha and his band of armed Hindu 'boys' was neither communal nor secular: they were measures needed to ensure that the Muslim League's gambit to capture Calcutta failed.
Films and books exaggerate—they call it artistic licence—to prove a point, so Agnihotri has not done anything unprecedented. To judge a man who did what he did in 1946 by today's standards of 'acceptable' behaviour is not unprecedented either; but it leads to inaccuracies. Mukherjee does not need to be 'saved" from today's 'communal" slur: he lived in extraordinary times; it was an inflection point of history which needed actions that are deemed questionable only today.
Before Agnihotri's film catapulted Gopal Patha's life and deeds into the national arena, many people even in West Bengal had forgotten about him. Successive state governments did not acknowledge his achievement, though he was the one who prevented Bengal from entirely falling into the hands of the Muslim League. The vicious Hindu fightback he led against the 'Ladh-ke lengey Pakistan" brigade made the then Bengal Chief Minister HS Suhrawardy back down.
Eye for an eye may have been verboten in Gandhiji's scheme of things, but reality seldom cooperated. Most of his non-violent interventions failed though they made for great photos and newsreels. Only now is it being acknowledged openly that had there not been constant unGandhian incidents, from World War II and the formation of INA to the naval ratings mutiny and the forthright interventions of men like Gopal Patha, 15 August 1947 may not have been Independence Day.
It is fallacious to rely on the accounts of the police of those days (by definition loyal to the British and duty-bound to 'protect" the colony from Indian freedom fighters) to portray Mukherjee as a 'bad character". It is also equally fallacious to fit him into the default saintly 'satyagraha' mould of nationalist. The Anushilan Samiti and Yugantar which advocated a vehemently muscular path to freedom more akin to Subhas Chandra Bose's INA later, was what Bengalis followed.
In Mukherjee's account of those terrifying days of mid-August 1946, people can also get a glimpse of why so many Bengalis then and now do not regard Gandhiji with the degree of reverence that today's school children reading history textbooks think was universal. As Mukherjee pointed out succinctly to Whitehead, when the Muslims were going on a murderous rampage in Hindu majority Calcutta, Gandhiji was in Muslim majority Noakhali trying to prevent violence there.
By amassing arms (including buying pistols and bullets from American GIs stationed in Kolkata during World War II in exchange for bottles of whisky!) in 1942, Mukherjee was not committing a cardinal sin but following his instinct to arm himself against a colonial adversary, which also stood him in good stead in 1946 when it became clear that Bengal would be in the crosshairs of Muslim League activists once Partition and the creation of Pakistan became inevitable.
The chilling call for Direct Action to attain Pakistan made by no less than the then Chief Minister of united Bengal at the Maidan in Calcutta early on 16 August 1946 proved Mukherjee's suspicions were dead right. Moreover, the Mayor of Calcutta Syed Mohammed Usman circulated a leaflet in which he told the city's Hindu residents: 'Kafer, toder dhongsher aar deri nei. Sarbik hotyakando ghotbei!" (Infidels, your destruction is imminent; there will be genocide!")
It is known that Chief Minister Suhrawardy was in the Police Control Room that day, along with the British Police Commissioner. Considering he had reportedly told the estimated 100,000 Muslim League supporters at the rally that he had taken measures to 'restrain" the police, the subsequent killings of Hindus was inevitable. Identifying the proper sequence of events is important to prevent it being portrayed as a spontaneous and mutual outbreak of communal violence.
As Mukherjee's firsthand account to Whitehead underlines, the killings began soon after the rally ended, sending streams of Muslims into the rest of the city, confident about annexing it for Pakistan by decimating Hindus. Mukherjee was initially in an area where there was a Hindu majority, so his first reaction was to prevent violence. But when he realised that Muslims were rampaging elsewhere already, he decided strong retaliation was the only answer to stem the tide.
The condition of the hundreds of bodies that lay rotting by the roadside when the killing ended—once the Muslims attackers realised the futility of Suhrawardy's plan—showed that fury had been matched by fury, barbarity by barbarity; more than just an eye for an eye. Thus the fierce fightback Mukherjee started made it clear Hindus could not be ethnically cleansed from Calcutta as planned. But rather than put Mukherjee's actions in perspective, there was decades of silence!
The traditional propensity of Indians to internalise, compartmentalise and even rationalise traumatic events—sometimes simply to be able to survive and escape recurring mental agony—has led to many subversions of history. Silence is easily portrayed as absence of trauma not suppression of it. In Bengal, in particular, the silence about the events leading up to Partition, especially what happened on August 16, 1946 and the following few days, has led to egregious revisionism.
Whatever the merits or demerits of Agnihotri's The Bengal Files, Gopal Mukherjee's story must be heard and remembered. It cannot be glossed over just because it is uncomfortable or distressing. Those who do not want to watch the film must listen to Mukherjee himself recounting the events as even the actor who portrays him in the film clearly has no idea about the complexities of the man and the times he lived in. Saviours and sinners are often a matter of context.
The author is a freelance writer. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18's views.
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Vivek Agnihotri
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New Delhi, India, India
First Published:
August 19, 2025, 16:39 IST
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