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www.GOALias.blogspot.com10 Politics in India since IndependenceCredit: Nehru Memorial Museum and LibraryHospitality DelayedSaadat Hasan MantoRioters brought the running train to a halt.People belonging to the other communitywere pulled out and slaughtered with swordsand bullets.The remaining passengers were treated tohalwa, fruits and milk.The chief organiser said, ‘Brothers andsisters, news of this train’s arrival wasdelayed. That is why we have not beenable to entertain you lavishly – the way wewanted to.’Source: English translation of Urdu shortstory Kasre-NafsiGandhi in Noakhali (now in Bangladesh) in 1947.Amritsar and Kolkata became divided into‘communal zones’. Muslims would avoidgoing into an area where mainly Hindusor Sikhs lived; similarly the Hindus andSikhs stayed away from areas of Muslimpredominance.Forced to abandon their homes andmove across borders, people went throughimmense sufferings. Minorities on bothsides of the border fled their home andoften secured temporary shelter in ‘refugeecamps’. They often found unhelpful localadministration and police in what was tillrecently their own country. They travelledto the other side of the new border by allsorts of means, often by foot. Even duringthis journey they were often attacked,killed or raped. Thousands of women wereabducted on both sides of the border. Theywere made to convert to the religion of theabductor and were forced into marriage. In many cases women werekilled by their own family members to preserve the ‘family honour’.Many children were separated from their parents. Those who didmanage to cross the border found that they had no home. For lakhsof these ‘refugees’ thecountry’s freedom meantlife in ‘refugee camps’, formonths and sometimesfor years.Writers, poets andfilm-makers in India andPakistan have expressedthe ruthlessness of thekillings and the sufferingof displacement andviolence in their novels,short-stories, poems andfilms. While recountingthe trauma of Partition,they have often used thephrase that the survivorsthemselves used todescribe Partition — asa ‘division of hearts’.The Partition wasnot merely a divisionof properties, liabilities