Prologue continues....

The partition of the country, the creation of Pakistan on a religious basis, the uncontrollable violence, and the problems of refugees at an almostunmanageable level created a situation in the country in which establishedstructures of governance had almost collapsed. Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east had borne the brunt of violence in the aftermath ofpartition.

Millions perished in the carnage. Gandhi went to Naokhali in Bengal which was the scene of a horrendous massacre and asked the peopleto stop the madness. He staked his life for restoring peace. Gandhi wentfrom house to house, street to street, alone and unescorted by security men, exhorting people to stop killing each other. The great soul with a bamboo staff in one hand and a lantern in the other, walking from village to village in those dreadful nights preaching peace, was indeed another worldly sight. But that was Gandhi. Violence in Bengal stopped immediately. Viceroy Mountbatten said he was confident that the one man army of Gandhi would bring peace to Bengal.

Determined action by Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel ultimately brought the situation under control in other parts of the country. There was in fact a serious danger of India sliding into anarchy.

The magnitude of the problem created by partition could not be anticipated.

The great moral stature of the leaders and quick and decisive action taken by them to meet the situation could save the country.

However, the logic of partition continued to haunt India because of the belief of some of theHindus that Muslims were responsible for the partition, although it was a fact that the Muslims who wanted to stay on in India and did stay back were in no way associated with the demand for partition or a separate homeland for Muslims. For them, India was, is and will be their homeland. This fact was emphatically stated by Pandit Nehru in a letter written to the chief ministers on 15 October 1947. He wrote:

To be continued...