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If the symbol of unity at New Delhi was remote, the communal hatred that had forced the partition now faced was real enough. On both sides of the new dividing line, between Pakistan and Hindu India, minority groups wondered what to do. A Moslem tonga (two-wheeled carriage) driver, who had lived 20 years in Delhi, thought of moving to the Punjab. "I will wait and see what happens," he said. "If there is any trouble, I will send for my mother, my sister and my two buffalo, on my farm in the United Provinces." But it would cost him $50 to move to the Punjab—and the meager amount he collects in fares barely pays for food on the black market. Besides, he was still paying off a $200 debt incurred when he had tried vainly to save the life of a typhoid-stricken son.
A Hindu milkman in Bombay thought of moving his 68-year-old father from the Lahore district (which will go to Pakistan). "We own half a dozen cows and bullocks and three-quarters of an acre of land. My father would hate to leave our village and breathe the foul air of Bombay. I, my wife and five children are sharing a one-room apartment with another couple with three children. How can I accommodate my father? But I must bring him down. I cannot abandon him to Pakistan."
A Pathan watchman from the North-West Frontier Province thought he might have to go back to the barren soil of his native district. "The Hindu who owns the firm where I work has given me notice, saying he cannot trust foreigners to guard his shop. Who will give me jobs now? What will happen to my family?"
Who Will Pay? A Hindu chaprasi (office boy) in a Delhi Government office, who owned three acres of land in a Pakistan district, thought he had better bring his wife and family to Delhi. But then he would have to sell his land. "Who will pay a good price for my property?" he asked. "I tried to sell it recently, but some Moslems who were originally prepared to purchase it now say they will get it anyway, once Pakistan comes into being, for little or no money."
All along the prospective border between Pakistan and Hindu India, minorities were on the move. From little villages in the Moslem Punjab, Hindu and Sikh traders and moneylenders trekked to Delhi or the United Provinces. Among them were men who had been in charge of rationing food and clothing during the war, and men who profited by high wartime prices.
Returning Punjabi soldiers last year had turned in hate against the moneylenders, merchants and all their coreligionists. In Bengal it had been the same. While 1½ million died of famine, landowners and food dealers, Moslem and Hindu alike, had reaped profits of 1½ billion rupees. "Every death in the famine," estimated the Woodhead Famine Enquiry Commission two years ago, "was balanced by roughly a thousand rupees of excess profit." The economic grievance of peasants against landlords and profiteers became a religious fight.