Posted on 03/12/2008 4:33:06 PM PDT by forkinsocket
NEW DELHI -- Every year in March, Bir Bahadur Singh goes to the local Sikh shrine and narrates the grim events of the long night six decades ago when 26 women in his family offered their necks to the sword for the sake of honor.
At the time, sectarian riots were raging over the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, and the men of Singh's family decided it was better to kill the women than have them fall into the hands of Muslim mobs.
"None of the women protested, nobody wept," Singh, 78, recalled as he stroked his long, flowing white beard, his voice slipping into a whisper. "All I could hear was the sound of prayer and the swing of the sword going down on their necks. My story can fill a book."
Although the political history of the 1947 partition has featured prominently in Indian classrooms, personal stories such as Singh's have gone unrecorded. Hundreds of thousands of Indians have remained trapped in their private pain, many ashamed of the acts they committed, others simply wary of confronting ghosts from so long ago.
Now, however, the aging survivors of partition are beginning to talk, and historians and psychologists are increasingly acknowledging the need to study the human dimensions of one of the most cataclysmic events of the 20th century.
About 1,300 survivors of partition, including Singh, have been interviewed as part of an ambitious, 10-year research project that examines the experiences of people across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. And since late last year, a number of new books, research papers and cultural events have attempted to lift the shroud of silence surrounding partition.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
i hope Mahatma Gumby is enjoying hell for his part in that mess.
Millions died. Is it over and doen with? Maybe if the moslems would stop the mayhem.
Quote from the article: “At the time, sectarian riots were raging over the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, and the men of Singh’s family decided it was better to kill the women than have them fall into the hands of Muslim mobs.”
Um...how about using the damn sword to DEFEND the women?
Wouldn't want to Monday morning quarterback this.
Partition was done too hurriedly. But I suspect that it was necessary. How many would have died if India had NOT been partitioned?
This article gives a typical account: “According to conservative estimates, about half a million Hindus and Muslims were slaughtered.” At the time, I just assumed that Hindus and Muslims were equally guilty of these atrocities. Perhaps they were. But having taken another look at Muslims since that time, I wonder.
Certainly the Washington Post isn’t about to tell us.
What I don’t understand is why they didn’t send a brave man to face the mob with those swords.
The Sikhs is a militant religion. Each woman should have been given a sword or knife and with the men told to cut their way through the mob. Acting as a group, they would have been very hard to stop, and any who were stopped would have likely been killed in the process.
Around the world, girls and women should be taught to always carry a blade or sharp weapon, and if attacked by a man, to use it on him. This alone would end much of the violence in the world against women.
It was going to happen no matter what he did — and in the end, India’s better for it, otherwise it would have the 300 million from Pakiland and Bangladesh added to it’s already substantial members of the ROP
good question — though, I’d like to think this was because they were surrounded and the Moos were about to break in.
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