A Bend in the River of Life (2 page)

W
hile the plan of Amit Roy was beginning to take shape, ominous clouds appeared on the political horizon. As the price for relinquishing the colonial rule over India, the British Raj was about to declare the partition of the country along the racial divide into India and Pakistan. Since the end of the First World War serious discussions and negotiations had been taking place between the British Government and the Indian leadership with regard to the freedom of India. The then population of British India consisted of Hindus 70%, Muslims 25% and other faiths 5% approximately. The Hindu leadership demanded freedom for the entire British India as an undivided Secular India; but the Muslim leadership's proposal was to create an Islamic Pakistan out of British India first and declare freedom to both India and Pakistan simultaneously.

For many centuries the Hindus and Muslims lived together peacefully as neighbors, respecting each other's religious beliefs. Even Mughal Emperor Akbar and his son Jahangir had Hindu wives. What Akbar did for the amity between his Hindu and Muslim subjects is written in gold in the scrolls of history. The tradition of unity that he built and largely followed by the successive Mughal rulers on the one hand and the Deccan Sultanates and the Hindu rulers of the rest of India on the other, was not just fake or shallow. The British Raj had a taste of that unity at the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857 forged by the Hindu and Muslim leaders. Since then the British Raj tried to do everything possible to dislodge that unity
without any noticeable success. However, at the crack of the twentieth century, when the Independence Movement started taking roots in the ground, the British Raj began sowing seeds of discord between the two largest religious communities to prolong its vicious rule. At first, it uncannily stoked the religious fire by introducing the “Divide and Rule” policy. However, when that sinister move also failed to dampen the compelling human desire for freedom, the last bait was to inject the “Divide and Free” policy in the negotiation package for independence. This scorched earth policy was thrust into the fray as an ulterior motive so that the two newly independent but racially divided countries would continue to fight between themselves long after the departure of the British Raj from the Indian sub-continent. That was the veiled punishment they wanted to inflict on their subjects for what they perceived as the audacity to clamor for freedom!

At the beginning of the Independence Movement, Indian National Congress was the only organization leading the masses of all faiths and negotiating with the British Raj. However, allured by the bait dangled by the British Raj, some Muslim leaders began breaking away from the Congress Party one by one. The Muslim League was formed. By the end of the 1920's the dissension between the Hindus and Muslims started penetrating the grassroot level through the political leadership at the top. The division of the country on the communal lines was thus a foregone conclusion. The Second World War merely prolonged the inevitable. None the less, the Quit India Movement of 1942 made governance difficult for the British Raj. But British Home Government reached an agreement with the leaders of the Independence Movement to post pone their campaign till the end of the war in return for the declaration of independence soon after the war. Meanwhile, unbeknown to the ordinary masses of India and true to United States of America's ideal of spreading the flame of freedom everywhere on this earth, successive US Administrations after the First World War also kept
their intense pressure on the British Government to grant freedom to the Indian sub-continent at the earliest. The announcement of the Indian Independence was, therefore, one of the priorities of the first elected British Government after the war. What remained to be done was to set up the date and the logistics of the transfer of power. And that was the most difficult part.

The feverish talks on the partition of British India simultaneously with the imminent independence sparked off the irrational passion and communal frenzy among both the Hindus and Muslims. At an instant, centuries of friendship gave way to hostility. Friends suddenly turned into foes. Religious tolerance degenerated into bigotry. Beastliness of man got the better of godliness. India was in turmoil of catastrophic proportions.

In broad geographical terms the Muslim majority areas of the country were the Northwestern provinces and East Bengal, which was where Rana's family was ensconced for centuries. It was reasonably certain that by and large these provinces would form the core of the new Islamic State. The net result of this division on the basis of faith was the exodus of tens of millions of people from both sides of the border unprecedented in human history. Mostly Hindus and Sikhs from the Muslim majority areas and Muslims from the Hindu majority areas of the undivided India began crossing the imaginary border even before the real border was drawn. The date of the transfer of power was set at midnight between August 14 and 15, 1947. Pakistan chose August 14 as their Date of Independence and India opted for August 15.

Be that as it may, many well-meaning people like Amit Roy were of the opinion that the partition would not take effect after all. They were naïve enough to suggest that even if it did, it would be temporary; the two nations would decide to come together again after the departure of the British. So some people planned for temporary migration. They thought once the dust of the turmoil settled down, they would return to their erstwhile hearth and homes. They just
locked up their properties and arranged for temporary relocations. But events belied their hopes. Since the dawn of civilization history taught us time and time again that in a fluid situation like this all evil forces tend to combine together to give the civilization a sinister name. When greed and lust join the religious passion, degradation of human mind attains the beastliest worst.

At the ignition of exodus, the miscreants began infiltrating the empty properties and grabbing them by force. Soon that misdeed also was not enough because it did not involve inhuman torture and violence over fellow human beings. So they decided to perpetrate the worst form of brutality at the religious altar. They began attacking the migrating minorities, maiming and killing the men and raping and abducting the women. As the news spread over radio and newspapers, retaliation reverberated at a larger scale and in a ghastlier manner elsewhere on the other side of the border. Riot broke out at thousands of places simultaneously. Law and order became paralyzed totally. Only jungle rule prevailed. As the Independence Day drew closer, the brutality and insanity were stepped up at an increasing crescendo. Soon ghost trains stashed with thousands of dead and mutilated bodies started arriving from either side of the border with blood dripping along the mute train tracks. Death and destruction stilled the minds of the civilized. The foul odor of the dead filled the air. The blood-soaked earth recorded for the posterity the most thoughtless, most inept and most brutal end of nearly 200 years of abhorrent and ignominious British rule in the history of mankind.

When the first bout of riot took place on the outskirts of Amit Roy's neighborhood, a shock wave rippled through the community. Good fortune would have it, the peaceful neighborhood was part of the enclave of the high and mighty with enormous political and economic clout. For obvious reasons the neighborhood was meticulously protected by the crack police and military units under instructions to shoot at sight if it was necessary to quell the riot there. Without that impregnable defense befitting a fortress, the community
was not prepared to protect itself against the rampage of the wild mob.

Rana was not even three years old then, but the first night's riot would forever remain etched in his mind. All day he heard a word “curfew” which sounded scary to him. Before sunset a few families of the neighborhood came and joined his family under a group survival plan hastily hatched up. The females and children were asked to stay on the second floor under cover of darkness behind locked iron gates and latched doors. All the adult males stayed alert, roaming all around the garden of the property armed with whatever defensive weapons were at their disposal. At one point in the evening, little Rana walked up the stairs to the roof with Rajani and Devika only to observe the night sky with an orange glow arising out of numerous arsons torched by the rampaging and killing mob. Rana did not under stand everything, but perceived something terrible was happening.

Next day, all the men in the neighborhood got together and took two immediate decisions: First, to prepare for the self-defense and second, to send away all the females and children to their friends and family on the other side of the border at the very first opportunity. The ghastliness of the previous night's killing and cruelty was ominous. The impact of the riot changed the lives of the neighborhood forever. Those like Amit Roy who had not taken the fact of the impending partition of the country seriously and were planning to carry on with their lives as before, were hastened to take the decision of safety first for their families. Consequently, in the first phase of the exodus the families began despatching their young females to safe havens.

Amit Roy's family too could not escape the inevitable. Discussions were taking place among Rajani, Amit and his two younger brothers Sumit and Sudip with regard to the course of action the family should take. Though as the two youngest members of the family Devika and Rana had no part in the discussions, they remained in the hearing distance to follow vaguely what was being parleyed out
of sheer anxiety. Within a few days, Amit's married sister Kamala came with her husband, Gautam. They were on their way to Calcutta on the other side of the border. According to the plan of the family, they came to pick up Devika to escort her on their way to safety.

That was the first time that Rana met with Aunt Kamala who had been married couple of years before he was born. She looked very congenial, wearing a smile all the time. But her visit did not sit well with Rana. It only made his worst consternations come true, for he was told that Devika would go away with Kamala and Gautam. His playmate and companion of all seasons, Devika would go away with Kamala! How could he reconcile with that hard fact? How could he imagine life without Devika? As the olders of the family were planning for the future and Devika was making preparations for her unplanned journey, he began shedding tears silently in a corner of the balcony in order not to make things difficult for his grandma Rajani during that difficult hour. Devika's departure time approached inevitably. Rana remained calm and speechless on the lap of Rajani, tears streaming down his usually red cheeks. Devika came near him and took him on her arms. Confronted with that unforeseen and unavoidable separation with her mother Rajani, her older brothers and nephew Rana for the first time in her short life, she was also weeping profusely, not knowing when she would see them again. Neither Rana nor Devika could speak, for unbearable emotions chocked their voices. Finally, Devika quietly handed him back to Rajani and quickly walked into the waiting car. For the first time in his pitiably short existence on this beautiful earth Rana tasted the pangs of separation. When his mother broke away he was too young to realize. This time it was too painful to swallow.

Amit continued his consultation with Sheila's family, his friends and colleagues whose opinion counted to take a final decision to migrate Rajani and Rana. By that time the consensus was to send all women and children at the earliest, because the law and order was worsening day by day and the situation was too fluid to be of comfort
to anyone. So the decision had to be taken promptly. Fortunately, Amit's another cousin Anjali and her family had been residents of Calcutta for a long time. Her husband just retired from the Indian Railways. They were able to rent two extra rooms from their landlord. So the decision was taken finally to send Rajani and Rana to stay with them temporarily. Message was dispatched to Kamala to send Devika also to join them. Even at that stage Amit was convinced that the situation would return to normalcy in six months time.

Everyone felt that the journey by the River Ganges in a steamer would be much safer than that in a dreadful train, for by then the miscreants began using trains to send their message of massacre to the other side of the border. A first class cabin was booked on the flagship steamer owned by the British Steamship Company. The responsibility to escort Rajani and Rana was entrusted with Amit's second brother Sumit. Thus on a fateful December morning, at the age of less than three, Rana's journey began to an unknown destiny. But he was happy for he was told that he was going to be united with Devika again. He could not wait any longer. He had so much to tell her of the things that happened after her departure that he did not know where to begin. The journey by steamer was not very eventful except that the deck was full of frightful people with lock, stock and barrel, leaving forever what they had always trusted to be their ancestral home, not knowing what was in store for them in the days and months ahead. Late in the evening, the steamer brought them to a busy river port on the Indian side which was also a large railway junction. From there the train would haul them to reach Calcutta next morning.

Devika was waiting anxiously. Learning that Rajani and Rana were scheduled to arrive that morning, her expectancy was understandably heightened. She could not sleep the night before in excitement. Willy-nilly she had to come away with Kamala in a huff without an inkling of what way the wind would blow next; when the family would come together again. After all, she was just twelve. Since
morning, hearing the sound of cars she came out of the house a number of times only to be disappointed. Suddenly, she heard from the distance the scintillating tune of the musical bells of the striding hooves and the enchanting tinkle of the bells usually hung around the neck of the horses of a carriage. She knew that from the Central Station along with taxis the horse carriages were also available as an alternative mode of transportation. Her sixth sense told her that it was carrying Rajani and Rana. She came out running. By then the carriage came close to the house. Devika and Rana saw each other after a few agonizing months of separation. In a flash the twelve year old aunt and her three year old protégé were in embrace with each other. Tears of joy and relief flowed from each and commingled in an eternal bond. All the pains and apprehensions were forgotten, all the fears and uncertainties brushed aside. What stood out at that moment of the anxious reunion was peace wrapped around perfect bliss. There was a lot to say, but nothing was spoken. Emotional overflow stifled the voices. Yet everything was communicated through the outpouring of boundless love and peerless affection. When the dialogue is between the two hearts words mean nothing.