Word: calcuttas
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Then the Prosecutor could turn to India: "Everywhere the armed and the many devoured the helpless and the few. In Calcutta, in Lahore, in Amritsar, in Old Delhi and New Delhi and throughout the magnificent plain of the dismembered Punjab, in homes and shops and factories and farms and villages and in the religious sanctuaries of all faiths, amid the clotting of the terrified in depots and on guarded trains and on lonely station platforms and in the vast shelterless encampments of refugees and their hypnotized columns across the land, the devastation raged alike among Hindus and Moslems and Sikhs...
...When tragedy runs amok blame is universal, inextricable and irrelevant. That the horror was deeper than the ideals or ambitions of the leaders was ironically demonstrated when they tried to stop it. Mohamed Ali Jinnah urged restraint, but the killing did not cease. Gandhi fasted in Calcutta with ultimate local effect, but elsewhere the killing did not cease. When he visited their sanctuary, 30,000 groaning Moslems virtually adored him, but the killing did not cease. Nehru personally rescued two Moslem girls from a gang of Sikhs, but the killing did not cease. A conference between Nehru and Pakistan...
...Threatened. Another witness had talked to rich Hindus who last week had begun fleeing into Calcutta from Eastern Pakistan. These Hindus, he said, reported increased activity of the Moslem League National Guard organizations. If terrorism breaks out in northeast India, where 13,000,000 Hindus live, the carnage might be unimaginably greater than in the Punjab...
...Calcutta recently, frenzied Hindus and Moslems were knifing and beating each other to death. In this crisis, a septuagenarian Indian decided not to eat. The effect of the decision was miraculous. Almost immediately the murdering ceased, and temporarily and locally, at least, one of India's abysmal problems was resolved. This week, the Indian, Mohandas Gandhi, was in New Delhi. He had stopped his fast; now he tried prayers and meditation...
...Mahatma magic had worked well in Calcutta. Just after 62 people had been killed, 400 injured, in 24 hours, Gandhi had announced that he would not eat until "sanity returned to Calcutta." (Aside he said: "As usual I shall permit myself to add salt and soda bicarbonate to the water I may wish to drink during the fast.") Anxious Calcuttans read about the Mahatma's pulse rate, his blood pressure (both diastolic and systolic) and the acetone and albumen in his urine; they stopped rioting...