Word: calcuttas
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...Mahatma, who more than any other one man had brought independence to India, was not in New Delhi on the day of days. He was in troubled Calcutta, mourning because India was still racked by communal hatred. (In the Punjab last week, even more than in Calcutta, communal warfare blazed. Nearly 300 were killed...
From Karachi to Calcutta, he flew through blinding rain and cloud. Over the Hump, which he had flown 102 times during World War II for the Chinese National Aviation Corp., the plane bounced and tossed. Blue St. Elmo's fire glowed eerily from propellers and wing tips. His automatic pilot went out. For the rest of the way, he had to fly by manual control...
Indians were erasing the memory of British rule from the very place names. Calcutta's Clive Street (India's Wall Street) had been renamed Netaji Subhas Road to honor the late Bengal leader, Subhas Chandra Bose. He was a traitor in British eyes for helping the Japs; but to Indians Bose was a patriot. The holy Ganges would revert to the Sanskrit form, Ganga. Madras would become Chennapatnam. The city of Rajahmundry would become Rajamahendravaram, which would be harder to spell, but since 87% of Indians could not write that would not matter so much...
Virtually the entire British commercial community was staying. With a capital stake estimated at four to six billion dollars, British tea planters in Assam, jute mill owners in Calcutta, heads of shipping and insurance companies in Bombay preferred the dozens of servants and the abundant food to the prospect of doing business in the deepening drabness of postwar Britain...
Quite suddenly, Britons were more popular than they had ever been in India. In Calcutta, Hindus dragged eleven Moslems from a train, hacked them to death. At Amritsar 120 were killed, hundreds injured in rioting between Sikhs and Moslems. But none attacked the once-hated British, who could thank two men for the heightened prestige of their graceful exit...