Word: hindus
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...their heels in the wet parts. They are silent, except for a child whimpering now and then, but their faces tell the story. Many are sick and covered with sores. Others have cholera, and when they die by the roadside there is no one to bury them. The Hindus, when they can, put a hot coal in the mouths of their dead or singe the body in lieu of cremation. The dogs, the vultures and the crows do the rest. As the refugees pass the rotting corpses, some put pieces of cloth over their noses...
...Hindus, who account for three-fourths of the refugees and a majority of the dead, have borne the brunt of the Moslem military's hatred. Even now, Moslem soldiers in East Pakistan will snatch away a man's lungi (sarong) to see if he is circumcised, obligatory for Moslems; if he is not, it usually means death. Others are simply rounded up and shot. Commented one high U.S. official last week: "It is the most incredible, calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland...
About 80% of the refugees from predominantly Moslem East Pakistan are Hindus seeking sanctuary in West Bengal and other eastern Indian states, where their co-religionists are in the vast majority. What particularly worries India is that their chances of ever returning home are diminishing. Last week New Delhi said that the Pakistanis were destroying the title deeds of property owned by Hindus in East Pakistan. So «u the Indians may have to accept, on a permanent basis, a Pakistani refugee population that could eventually reach 10 million...
...roads the refugees travel are littered not only with clothes and discarded household goods, but with bodies of cholera victims left by those too frightened of the disease to bury their own dead. Although Hindus practice cremation, many of the bodies are merely singed with two burning sticks and then left for the hovering vultures or wild dogs to pick apart. Even when the corpses are buried, they are often dug up by carrion eaters. Police have their hands full trying to prevent refugees from tossing corpses into the rivers. In the overcrowded hospitals, the sick and dying are jammed...
...political disaster in the massive influx of impoverished peoples. The refugee problem has chronically troubled India since the August 1947 partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan. In northern India there was a fairly balanced exchange, with 6,000,000 Moslems fleeing to Pakistan and 6,500,000 Hindus and Sikhs entering India. But since partition, 4,300,000 Hindus from East Pakistan have fled to India, for the most part into West Bengal. There has been no comparable flight of Moslems. This imbalance has created the social, political and economic problems that have plagued the state and turned...