Hours after West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee announced that “Khela Diwas” will be celebrated on August 16; the BJP equated it to Muslim League’s Direct Action Day, which began on August 16, 1946.
Taking her “Khela Hobe” slogan to the national stage, Mamata declared that “Khela” will now happen in all states until the BJP is removed from the country.
The Trinamool Congress chief also announced that “Khela Diwas” will be marked by distributing footballs to poor children.
Reacting to this, BJP leader Swapan Dasgupta said that Muslim League launched its Direct Action Day and began the Great Calcutta Killings in 1946.
‘Khela Hobe has come to symbolise a wave of terror attacks on opponents’
“In today’s West Bengal, Khela Hobe has come to symbolise a wave of terror attacks on opponents,” he added.
BJP leader Amit Malviya took a dig at TMC’s plan to go national.
“Mamata Banerjee wants to hold a rally of opposition leaders in Kolkata in order to cobble up a front. She is free to do so, except that the unelected CM should realise that all non-TMC leaders, invited in Delhi, left the venue, even before she started speaking,” he said in a tweet.
Attacking Mamata, Suvendu Adhikari said that the post-poll violence in West Bengal has left behind the Calcutta killings, and the Noakhali riots of 1946, and the 1984 anti-Sikh riots.
“The more the inaction of govt machinery during the post-poll violence is criticized, the less it is,” he added.
What happened on August 16, 1946?
The Direct Action Day was launched on August 16, 1946, by the Muslim League to call for the partition of India and the creation of the independent Muslim state of Pakistan.
Calling for Direct Action Day, All India Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah had said that he wanted “either a divided India or a destroyed India”.
After the general strike was announced, violent clashes erupted between Hindus and Muslims resulting in thousands of deaths in Calcutta.
This violence also spread to other parts of the country with reports of riots coming from Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North-Western Frontier Province.
