Gandhi: The 'one man army' behind the 'Great Calcutta Miracle'

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Mahatma Gandhi drove down in a pre-World War Cadillac automobile into Kolkata's Beliaghata, a densely populated locality and the epicentre of rioting in the megapolis, to be greeted for the first time in his life by crowds which shouted 'Go back Gandhi'. He had come to stay in a dilapidated single-storey building with Doric pillars situated in a tiny by-lane off Beliaghata main road, set between the sprawling Muslim slum of Miagunje and a lower middle class Hindu locality, to try to bring peace to the most populous city between Paris and Shanghai.

The city, India's capital till a few decades back and the nerve-centre of the country's political, cultural and industrial renaissance, was on the eve of Independence riven by intense communal rioting which had reared its head in the aftermath of Muslim League's Direct Action Day, a year before. The house, named Hyderi Manzil, was in a sort of no-man's land in riot-hit Kolkata and had been selected by Hussein Suhrawardy, former Muslim League Premier of Bengal, at whose pleading the man dubbed 'One Man Boundary Force' by Lord Louis Mountbatten had agreed to come to Kolkata to try and bring peace to the «most troubled city on earth at that time».

«Gandhi came out and calmed the crowd that had gathered against him… that was the start of the work of the 'One Man Peace Army' in this very city,» said Papri Sarkar, secretary of the 'Purba Kalikata Gandhi Smarak Samiti' which runs Gandhi Bhavan, the new name given to Hyderi Manzil, which in 1947 was owned by a Bohra Muslim merchant family with the surname 'Bengali'. The Mahatma is quoted as having reasoned with the angry crowd: «I have come to serve Hindus and Muslims alike.

I am going to place myself under your protection. You are