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,
any Muslim League-administered Province, a situntion•
which is not without its natural repercussions in the remain-,
ing parts of India.
There are three parties in India who will share between'
themselves the load of sin of unpiecedentad barbarity and
blood-bath, of the unspeakable profanation and violations
womanhood, which Mother India experiences at the present;
moment—the Muslim League, the British Government-
in-India and the Bengal Congress and Hindu Mahasabha
leaders. The responsibilities of the British and
the
League in the matter are very well •known, and needs,
no repetition here.
But
what have the others done t
is all very well for people to charge the British and the.
League for all that happened in East Bengal, with conni-,
vance, abetment or inaction, or with all these. Because,
with them rested the Governmental responsibility
for
ensuring the safety and security of the population in that
part of India.
But there were the Congress and Hindu Mahe Sabha.
"existing" and "functioning" in Bengal ; there were
reports,
of "meetings" and "preparations" going on in these areas
days, if not weeks, before the actual carnage began, of
which the Congress and the Sabha leaders and their workers
could not have been quite unfamiliar. They had sufficient
data before them, especially from causes which led to the
Calcutta massacre, to warn them against undue reliance
on the Provincial Government or the League Ministry in
Bengal in the matter of preserving law and order and
defending the innocent and the weak. They, had their
I. N. A. and other volunteer organizations. Could not the
savage destructions in East Bengal have been averted, or
at least the intensity and extent of it lessened, if the Congress
and the Sabha had betimes acted with the requisite measure
of earnestness and efficiency in the much-needed defence
of
the defenceless and undefended population ? It adds poig-
nancy to the misfortune.
For almost fifteen continuous days the people in Bost,
Bengal were left forsaken, so to say, to be ravaged s4
devouvered by the .wolves. They
say,
they .wece