Why did the movement come to an end? Despite arguments of Gandhian legitimacies, the seemingly ‘sudden’ end of a ‘popular’ movement that survived for two years is baffling, to say the least. Upon his release from prison in May 1944, Gandhi unilaterally gave a call for surrender for all those who were ‘underground’, distancing himself and the Congress High Command from the violent ‘underground’ revolutionaries. But while most of the remaining underground revolutionaries, including those of Midnapore, surrendered, those of the Satara Prati Sarkar did not; rather, some revolutionaries of the Prati Sarkar argued that the question of surrender did not even arise.1 In Satara, police repression made little difference to the movement; Gandhi's original call of ‘Do or Die’ took precedence over his current demands of surrender, and the activities of the Prati Sarkar – local nyayadan mandal (justice board or law board) work, punishment of criminals, sporadic bank and post office robberies – intensified from mid-1944.2 Given the intense struggle that the revolutionaries of Tamralipta Jatiya Sarkar had waged for nearly two years, why did they not follow the Satara example, then? Attempts to answer this question must, at least in part, find context in the famine of 1943, which impacted Bengal in unprecedented ways, in terms of not only hunger but also communal politics around famine relief and rehabilitation.3

The famine of 1943 impacted Midnapore as severely as it did the rest of Bengal. Famine conditions appeared in Midnapore earlier than they did in other parts of the province, and deaths by starvation started to occur as early as June 1943.