Was it the work of an insane individual, a stab in the back as in a communal riot; or the diabolical conspiracy of a gang? Was it a case of slow poisoning? Or, as it might be, was it a more diabolical, a more cunning master plan, in which the victim himself was hypnotically induced to commit suicide…
India was killed by Britain. The first blow was struck when the British (after ignoring and neglecting them for half a century after the events of 1857) instigated and encouraged the Muslims to demand separate electorates and then conceded it. That was the first step towards Pakistan, however copious tears Lord Mountbatten may now shed over the mortal remains of United India.
India was killed by the British and their ‘Divide and Rule’ policy. But not by the British alone. India was killed by fanatical Muslim Leaguers who played upon the community’s apprehensions and fears to produce in them a peculiar psychosis which was a dangerous combination of inferiority complex, aggressive jingoism, religious fanaticism, and fascistic Herrenvolk legends.
India was killed by the fanatical Hindus, the Hindu fascists and Hindu imperialists, the dreamers of a Hindu empire, the crusaders of Hindu Sangathan, who provided the ideological fuel for the fire of Hindu communalism and fanaticism.
India was killed by the Hindu communalists, the believers and supporters of Hindu exclusiveness…who yet masqueraded as Nationalists and Congressmen, who prevented the National congressmen and the National Movement from becoming a fully representative, completely non-communal front of all Indian patriots.
India was killed by the Communist Part of India which (during the days of its ‘People’s War’ and ‘pro-Pakistan’ policies) provided the Muslim separatists with an ideological basis for the irrational and anti-national demand for Pakistan. (Phrases like ‘homeland,’ ‘nationalities,’ ‘self-determination’ etc. were all ammunition supplied by the Communists to the legions of Pakistan.)
India was killed, and stabbed in the heart, by every Hindu who killed a Muslim, by every Muslim who killed a Hindu, by every Hindu or Muslim who committed or abetted, or connived at, arson, rape and murder during the recent (and earlier) communal riots.
That an imperialist power planned the dismemberment of our country in the very hour of our freedom is not surprising. The wonder, and the tragedy, is that India should have been killed by the children of India…
~ Excerpted from “Who Killed India” by Khwaja Ahmad Abbas, from the book India Partitioned: The Other Face of Freedom (1995).
