Light in the partition darkness

Happy Indian Independence Day.

Here's another personal partition story that I heard over a decade back. There is a restaurant called Komala Vilas, Sunnyvale which serves Tamil Brahmin food. There was a Tamil Muslim friend who used to help out there. This is the story that he heard. In Lahore in British colonial India, a lot of Tamil Hindus used to work there. It was a thriving multi-cultural city. One of them was a Tamil Brahmin lady, who now aged, was working in Komala Vilas.

After partition, all hell broke loose in Lahore. Hindu & Sikh minorities were systematically targeted in newly formed Jinnah's Pakistan. This lady had a Muslim lady friend. This Muslim lady's husband was a fanatic. During the carnage, she provided shelter to to the Hindu lady friend in her own house. And kept it a secret from her husband, steering her family away from the room where she was sheltered. And even fed her vegetarian food in secret. And she managed to escape to India after the carnage.

I always wondered. How did this woman manage to summon up so much courage to shelter someone in secret against her own husband? How would she even live with that man? Culturally, in those days, people would typically marry for life. Even if one spouse was grossly imperfect, they would still stick to the institution of marriage.

After Jinnah called for "Direct Action", violence broke out against the Bengali Hindus in then undivided Bengal. Later, reprisal violence broken out against the Muslims. This was the time when Gandhi, a religious Hindu himself, would lament that it would be better if religion hadn't come to the world. Understandable, since attachment to religion had provoked this violence. Gandhi worked very hard to quell the violence. Some Hindus told him that they would like to defend the Muslims from the reprisal violence. However, they didn't want to meekly die using non-violence (Ahimsa). They asked if they could use violence in self-defense and in defense of the others. Gandhi surprisingly agreed & justified it as well. This is the only instance that I know of when he realized that Ahimsa wouldn't always work & shelved it. Many Hindus did die protecting the Muslims in the reprisal violence.

Even in the times of greatest darkness, it is clear that some souls across all faiths can transcend the darkness and do what's right. This post is a small homage to those great souls.