'There are sane souls even in a madhouse'
- Maloy Krishna Dhar was twelve when he crossed the ‘rivers of blood’ and ‘mountains of carcasses’ that marked the pathway from East Pakistan to India. Sixty-five years and seven books later, he has chronicled the final train ride to the new India in his latest book, Train to India: Memories of Another Bengal.
(image)- Somebody once told me that while the people in North and Northwest India still seethe over those dreadful days, the people of West Bengal concluded that religion lay at the root cause of the violence, and hence turned to communism. Would you agree? I beg to disagree. Religion was at the core of Muslim separatist politics everywhere. In Bengal too, religion was used to partition Bengal in 1906 and again in 1947. In Bengal, Congress was never a peak movement. The peak movements were nationalist terrorism, armed struggle and a drift towards socialism introduced by Netaji Subhas and others. Mainstream Congress had ditched C. R. Das and Subhas, and had foisted the Nehru family. Gandhi aided that machination. Later, frustration with the Congress’ attitude towards Bengali refugees convinced the Bengalis that P.C. Ghosh and B. C. Roy were lackeys of Gandhi and Nehru. The Bengalis wanted a system change, and therefore welcomed the communists. This was because frustration with Congress had driven them to seek a viable alternative.
