To the Hon'ble President of India,
Partition of India was one of the most tragic incidents that the world has witnessed in the recent times. A decision of partitioning India on religious grounds was taken by colonial rulers in association with some representatives of the colonized India. They succumbed to the divisive forces and let the country bleed in a manner that has no parallel in the modern times. As a direct consequence to this, the number of persons killed was more than five times of those killed in the combined two atomic explosions in Japan. According to some realistic estimates, around 20 lac citizens were killed and almost 2 crore persons were adversely affected. In a horrifyingly short period, many citizens got unwillingly and forcibly displaced; many lost their bread earner; others lost near and dear ones; or lost their livelihood and ancestral as well as their self-earned property. Life of around close to five percent of the population was pushed to hell with a single decision of partition. The entire nation suffered and continues to suffer on account of its aftermath. Unfortunately, a nightmarish experience of even such a huge magnitude has failed to get the attention that it deserved from the post-partition India.
Our country can hardly afford another such trauma. But did we do something to prevent another such horrifying experience? Did we ever make any serious attempt to analyze the reasons that led to this disaster? I am afraid, we have done little in this regard. Quite contrary to this, in fact, India seems to have adopted a policy to keep an ostrich-vision on this. To make the situation even worse, this incident has been often ‘misused’ politically to indulge into a superficial blame game. In the absence of any serious investigation report or findings, it is allowed to get twisted and manipulated to suit anyone. Initially this was misused to create an environment against the potential opposition to the ruling government in the independent and democratic India. Officially and constitutionally, the nation has either avoided to find out the reasons that built up the atmosphere wherein partition seemed inevitable or has simply forced the country to accept it as an unavoidable and legitimate fate. With our policy of accepting the partition in this manner, we have indirectly, almost legitimized partition.
The nation has avoided to find out a probable connection of the demographic imbalance with this tragedy. We have never bothered to see the connect between the rise of an intolerant monotheist religion with this or the connection of our loss of history; wrong choices of heroes and refusal to acknowledge our unique open ancient tradition - with the tragedy that the nation went through. Instead, we were encouraged to live in a hallucinations artificially created by a skewed and wrong understanding of 'secularism'. This helped in developing an attitude of evading uncomfortable questions. And this might have emboldened the divisive forces and shown them a way to go for another kill.
Last year, the Hon'ble Prime Minister of India, gave us some hope in this regard when it was announced that the nation will observe August 14 as the Partition Horrors Remembrance Day.
As the next logical step, we the citizen of India, urge you to form a National Commission on Partition to investigate and find out the reasons that led to partition and advise the government accordingly, so that timely precautions are taken in this regard and the nation feels assured that this will never recur again.
Signed by citizens of India
Please sign the petition by visiting the following link
Please sign the petition by visiting the following link
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