A book written and researched by Dominique Lapierre and Larry Collins and banned in Pakistan, contains some very revealing facts about the great divide of the subcontinent.

By focussing on its leaders, Jinnah, Nehru, Gandhi, V P Menon, and its last viceroy, the writers bring forth the detailed account of the vivisection and its aftermath for which each of its well-wishers had been ill-prepared.

Britain shaken up after the world war and near bankruptcy with the Muslims killing the Hindus and vice versa, could not retain its colonial power for long. Lord Mountbatten, chosen for the last viceregal role, with an agenda of somehow keeping India annexed to Britain. Gandhi with his call for non-violence and dreams of a united India, getting deceived by his own disciples Nehru and V P Menon. Nehru, with his Brahmin outlook, often lost and forlorn, giving in to Mountbatten's cajoling for letting Jinnah have Pakistan and Jinnah, the cold, ambitious and aloof man, who pressed for an early independence knowing his days were numbered. Each one of them realizing the import of haste and not knowing what would ensue following the day the boundary line was drafted.

Radcliffe, the man who divided the subcontinent, had neva once  walked those lands he was asked to put under the knife. Some walls of a house would fall in one country while others in the other. This is the mockery with which the change was wrought.

Celebrations in both nations on 14 August would turn to graveyards of hope as ppl became disillusioned with the loss of life, property and faith in the slogan of freedom. As death walked in the streets of the subcontinent, rage against each other swelled in their hearts. Who to blame? 

Gandhi, the one man force of Lord Mountbatten in Calcutta, kept the communal peace there but while planning to lead  migrating columns of ppl to and fro Pakistan, became a victim of Hindu Nationalism. How the murderers first failed assassination attempt resulted in a second successful one owing to the slack and slumberous attitude of those in charge of its investigation? Such facts bespeak of the administrative mayhem of those days.

How Kashmir was lost to Pakistan in the early hours of the day the Pathans got busy looting the markets  instead of crossing the bridge which would surely have landed the valley safely in our hands. How Nehru clenching the signed document of accession to India after having been signed by Hari Singh swore that now they would neva let it go!

You read it and you wonder how worthless the lives of common man are and how impervious to their plight the dreams of the great men of the history are. To be a great man one must be human first and other than Gandhi who paid by his life for his call for brotherhood and peace, one gets disillusioned by many others who with their tall calls for freedom, had neva really envisioned the scope of the task they were undertaking.

Pakistan's leadership like yesterday remains ill-prepared for the task of governing and governing successfully a nation which has paid through its blood. Napolean used to say that time after time to make it fertile, the land asks for blood. I believe the blood will always be of the common man while its riches and glory always of the vampires and vultures busy feeding upon its ppl's flesh.

India with its vast cultural diversity was expected to be a victim of strife but with the passage of time we saw that each time it was Pakistan that fell. It actually gave way the day Jinnah died. That ambitious man who guarded its interests with an obsession, knew the corrupt ways of its other leaders. An air of mistrust prevailed even then among the early politicians of Pakistan just as it hangs around them  today.

Is it the leaders who are and have been bringing down this nation or is it its laidback ppl who have chosen  such men to lead them, responsible for today? When shall the dreams of its peasants and  labourers come true?

So dire is the ambience and so bleak the future!