Picking up the pieces -- Freedom and Parricide. Guha's 'India after Gandhi'

His prologue ends with a question 'why is there an 'India' at all? We use a similar turn of phrase sometimes, when we are upset about something 'Indian'. An expression one would use for an unwanted child. This is how I felt after I read the chapter 'Freedom and Parricide'. I had to look up the dictionary to get the exact meaning. 'Killing a parent or a relative'.

Picking up pieces is a neat English expression, while we probably are still at it, we are reminded again that the country started with picking up about a million dead bodies. We also get to know the frenetic pace at which events unfolded, largely uncontrollable.

We learn the significance of Jan 26, the day Indian National Congress held country wide demonstration for Purna Swaraj in the year 1930. When freedom came to India, I went with our neighbours to Madras. I remember the festivities and the excitement but not really much in detail, I was nine years old. I recall that later two streets which were predominantly Muslim got empty and the mosque near by was eerily quiet. I and a friend entered the mosque out of curiosity and the lone person who was there, spoke nicely to us but very seriously advised that it was not a good idea to visit the mosque at these times.

The story of the time, mostly about Gandhi desperately trying to bring peace back into the regions he kept visiting on foot many times, for a 77 year old is utterly amazing. Nehru trying to reduce the damage through administrative measures and holding fast to the concept of India as a democratic secular state, in spite of the partition and the horrific events that followed is also remarkable. I don't think the enormity of crimes committed against innocent people (relatives!) is really understood by those who are not victims.

The issues are so complex, the benefit of hindsight is not very likely to help. Irrespective of who all are to be blamed for this catastrophe, our real focus should be to try and understand what makes so many of us so evil. What triggers this mass madness! I do not know if there is any information about the casualties, how many from villages were affected or was it all in towns and cities?