Where was Mahatma Gandhi during the Independence celebrations of India in 1947?

On the eve of August 15, 1947, when India was gearing up to celebrate independence, the father of the nation, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi did not indulge in any of the festivities.

Not only was Bapu not a part of the celebrations at the national capital on August 15, but he did not celebrate India's independence at all.

Mahatma Gandhi spent the independence day in Calcutta striving hard to restore peace in the city that was witnessing communal violence among communities thirsty for each other’s blood. He reached Calcutta on August 9, 1947 and pledged to the Hindu minorities that he would protect them from the wrath of partition.

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He travelled to Noakhali, Calcutta (now Bangladesh) where the riots were at their peak. Men were being killed, women abducted and raped, and Hindus were forced to convert. Bapu was there with a promise to protect the minorities from the turbulence that would follow when East Bengal would become East Pakistan.

On August 11, Gandhi met with Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, the then-Prime Minister of Bengal. Suhrawardy asked Bapu to lend his protection to the Muslims of Bengal. Bapu obliged, on one condition. He wanted an assurance that the Hindus in Noakhali would remain unharmed. However, when the Hindus found out that Gandhi was with Suhrawardy, the man who was held responsible for the 1946 Calcutta killings, they were enraged.

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As agitated mobs pelted stones at the residence where Gandhi and Suhawardy were staying, Suhrawardy took the responsibility of the Calcutta killings in 1946 and expressed his regrets to the masses. The fuming Hindu mob was taken aback. This was termed as the "turning point” which had a “cleansing effect” according to Bapu’s great Grandson, Tushar A Gandhi, in his anecdote in The Hindu.

At the stroke of midnight hour, when the entire country heard the ‘Tryst with destiny', Mahatma Gandhi, the man who was irreplaceable in the Indian struggle for freedom, was yet again restoring peace in another part of the country.

In the book Gandhi Through Western Eyes, Horace Alexander, who believed in Gandhi's ideas and published extensively about Gandhi's philosophy, wrote, “For what Gandhi did on that day was one of the most extraordinary happenings in his entire life.”