This article offers an explanation for the defeat of Jogendranath Mandal and the Scheduled Castes Federation in the context of partition-era Bengal. Departing from analyses of Scheduled Caste integration, it explores the Federation’s efforts at creating an independent political platform through a strategic alliance with the Muslim League. To this end, it traces Mandal’s and the Federation’s trajectory through the following key moments: the anti-Poona Pact day and Day of Direct Action, the 1946 election, Dr B.R.

In 2005 Rev. Michael Roden, the vicar at Church of England church of St Mary’s in Hitchin (a small town about 30 miles north of London) was invited to India to give a series of sermons to Indian Church of England congregations. He was struck during his visit by the scars in Indian society that he thought were the remnants of Partition’s aftermath. His visit set him thinking about the ways in which Partition has shaped British as well as Indian and Pakistani society, and about how little people in the UK know about the calamitous results of British policy at the time of decolonization.