The inebriated hand that turned a straight line into squiggles did more than divide India; it tore apart hearts resulting in one of the worst, if not the worst displacement of human lives. There may be a pale aorta of sympathy for the man who was responsible, for Sir Cyril Radcliffe was a lawyer who had never set foot outside of England, let alone in India and he was given a timeframe of only a few months. Those that should have been responsive, the politicians of India and those who had run the British Raj must have known the repercussions and yet washed their hands of the affair. That's where democracy fails the very people it is to represent. True, the complexities of social divide and the careful machinations of systematic dismembering of the threads that bound people today was deliberately orchestrated by the British rulers, reeling in want, debt and devastation after the war.
The million or so that died were buried or cremated by their own. The displaced were looked after by themselves or their own. The revered leaders sans Gandhi had roofs over their heads, food on their plates and clothes starched and creased.
Fast forward to 1971, political rather than humanitarian compulsions allowed some ten million refugees to find sanctuary of sorts in India in conditions that were nothing short of pathetic. Genocide was treated as such in sheltering the hapless. The much vaunted 'civilised' west had little compulsion in destroying regime after regime in the middle-east on pretexts that were conveniently guised as 'sexed-up' or 'irrefutable evidence' that turned out to be unsexy and very refutable. Perfectly solid economies were reduced to shambles; cities to ruin and when people had been fleeing for their lives, refugees were suddenly unacceptable. So where, pray, were the doyens of democracy? Heart-wrenching stories of individuals, gut-wrenching photographs of children drowned and washed to shore became sensational headlines only for a few days leading to the meaningless and expensive discussions that led nowhere, buried in the morass of pontificated immorality, because politicians and others chose to wash their hands of implications.
As a young child this scribe had seen the TV advertisements of how a little sum could feed and educate a starving child in Africa. Many must have responded so how these advertisements run even today when the world is supposedly a better place. Why sell arms directly or indirectly to those who would drive terror into the hearts of those who don't agree with them? Why can't the money be used to feed, educate and house them? On the contrary, they are the ones who must abandon their values and traditions after having been murdered, raped and made homeless to swear an oath they don't subscribe to. The small matter of these same countries, where they seek refuge, having destroyed their lives is immaterial. This, in the name of humanity, democracy and human rights.
The same countries so sympathetic to the genocide of 1971 now find it reasonable to turn their backs on the Rohingyas and the country that is trying but unable to stop them coming in. It's just little Bangladesh after all. No matter the UN wants us to help and hardly any other member of it does.
