Word: bihar
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Moslems will celebrate Id-el-Atha, their version of the story of Abraham and Isaac. Usually they sacrifice cows, but this week many, lest the Hindus be offended, plan again to sacrifice sheep.† Even so, the two coincident festivals might touch off killing in Bengal, which, along with Bihar and the United Provinces, is considered the next great danger spot...
...Bihar villagers remembered a pre-Hindu superstition that the gods require human sacrifice whenever any major building is under construction. The faith of the Thugs, worshipers of Kali, Goddess of Destruction, who thought their goddess was the more pleased the more people they strangled in her name, had never quite died out. In the last 30 years about a dozen people have been sentenced in Bihar, Bengal and Madras on charges of offering human sacrifices...
...land and the gods were thirsty. To water the land, and to control the temperamental waters of the Kosi River in Bihar Province, the Indian Government planned the world's highest dam (730 ft.). But many a simple villager thought the plans for the dam would simply sharpen the thirst of the gods for human blood...
...When Bihar villagers heard of the plans for the Kosi dam, they locked their children indoors. Last week their schools were closed, for no pupils would attend. Bazaars and fairs shut down. Panicky villagers feared that 108 children would be kidnaped for sacrifice.* They picked 108 as the proper figure because that is sacred to Hindus. Rama, for instance, one of the incarnations of Vishnu, the Protector, offered his wife Sita 108 lotuses, each with 108 petals...
Then Huq lost the Bengal election, and Gandhi invited him down to discuss Huq's view that Bihar Province needed the Mahatma more than Bengal. There, at Noakhali, old Huq had his supreme moment. He converted Gandhi, sent the Hindu saint packing off on a Bihar side trip. Huq announced that the Mahatma had converted him, too. Said Huq to a meeting of Moslems: "I intend to spend the rest of my life preaching good will among Hindus and Moslems...