The Great divorce Everything got split up. There were just 73 days to make the settlement. Congress got the most valuable asset – the name “India,” instead of “Hindustan” A bitter quarrel over the debt. Britain owed five billion dollars to the people of India – how much for each country? And how to divvy the liquid assets, the cash in state banks, the gold ingots in the vault of the Bank of India the postage stamps in the district commissioner’s petty cash-box? Government offices divided their assets – 80% for India, 20% for Pakistan. 80% of the brooms – of the desks – tables – chairs And in every office, a count had to be made. ... Even of the chamber pots. Department heads would hide the best typewriters or substitute broken desks for the new ones assigned to the other side. Savage arguments over dishes, silversware and portraits in state residences.19 The one place there was no trouble: wine cellars. Hindus got them all. Moslems were given credit for what they had, to use in demanding something else. Often, there was intense pettiness. Dividing the instruments in the police band – a flute for Pakistan drum for India a trumpet for Pakistan a pair of cymbals for India. It worked in Lahore, until they got to one instrument left – a single trombone. Whereupon two deputies got into a fistfight over which side would get that one.20 20 Larry Collins and Dominique LaPierre, Freedom at Midnight, 207. Long arguments: who would pay the pensions for widows? Who would pay off the widows of sailors lost at sea? Would all Moslem widows have to be paid by Pakistan, no matter where they happened to be living? Would India pay all Hindu widows living in Pakistan?21 And how do you divide up roads? Pakistan would have 4,913 miles. India would have 18,077 miles of roads. What do you do – use bulldozers and shovels and wheelbarrows to make up the difference, giving India fewer than 80% and Pakistan more than 20%, to pay off the unfair amount of roads that one side had?22 Or should you say, each side gets the same percentage of wheelbarrows and shovels as it has roads? India’s libraries turned nasty. Dividing up sets of Encyclopedia Britannica... each dominion got an alternate volume. Dictionaries .. ripped in half with A to K going to India, the rest to Pakistan. Bitter quarrels over who gets WUTHERING HEIGHTS and ALICE IN WONDERLAND.23 The Kennel Club’s assets stayed with India – much to its members’ relief. But the Viceroy’s own white train was allotted to Pakistan. Some things just couldn’t be divided. For instance, the printing press able to print postage stamps and money. There was only one on the whole subcontinent. The Hindus insisted on keeping it. So the only way to make money that Pakistan would have was to take Indian rupees and stamp them with a rubber stamp, worded, “Pakistan.”24 And no split suited the fanatics on either side. Moslems wanted the Taj Mahal taken apart, and shipped to Pakistan. A Moghul had built it, remember. Hindus declared that the Indus River was theirs, and should be, because their sacred Vedas had been written along its banks. ... in spite of it flowing through the heart of Moslem India
Posted on: Sun, 14 Jul 2013 08:15:10 +0000
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