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"I was left among the dead for two days, dying of thirst, when at last a Hindu battalion of the Indian Army visited our village and rescued me. I insist revenge be taken on these traitors and brutes. We ought to declare war on Pakistan."
The Madness. The Prosecutor said:
"The stone of murder spread like a huge wave. This outrage in retaliation for that one and that in retaliation for still another, and a new one in retaliation for the latest before it, and still a newer in retaliation for that, another set aflame by the stories of refugees and another still by pure rumor, and another in retaliation for that and still another by rumor. The genius of India has ever been for myth, not rationality: and no man's reason may be expected to remain intact under the intricate chemistries of horror, heartbreak, revenge, the vertiginous contagion of mobs, a thousand years' collective, unconscious fertilization in allegiance to one faith and culture.
"Mere rumor, which runs at its wildest under such circumstances, is enough to dethrone reason; great terror, in a brave man or a cringer, can turn loose adrenal energies which must exhaust themselves in outrage and spoliation. It would be untrue to describe as a form of religious madness, even in religious India, a madness which operates also with equal fury among godless men. But where deep religiousness is present it is inevitably used, inevitably adds its own peculiar intensity."
The Bereaved. India's Premier Jawaharlal Nehru testified: "India has disgraced herself in the eyes of the world."
The Prosecutor commented:
"The thousand million of Asia, lifting up their hands for freedom, had looked to India for leadership. Now, East and West, hope is undermined and confidence destroyed. India's killings, not instigated by any alien force, are more morally burdensome upon Asia's cause than is China's war."
Mahatma Gandhi's confidante, ex-secretary and the present Indian Health Minister, Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, testified: "Gandhiji is very sad today. He has told me repeatedly that he is experiencing the pain and anguish of a thousand daggers pierced in his body."
During the killing, Gandhi had warned that there was danger of open war between India and Pakistan.
But the Prosecutor said:
"The world thought war was the ultimate horror, and civil war the worst of wars. It is not. India is what Macaulay called it, a 'decomposed society.' Even the British could not establish law; they merely kept order. A decomposed society cannot make war, which requires law, authority, organization. India and Pakistan may progress to the point where they can make war or even to the point where, being able to make war, they will decide to live in amity. But in the six weeks of the killing India and Pakistan were beneath war."
The Killers. The Court (which is composed of all men who want, for their own self-preservation, to understand violence) needed clarification of this point. One way of putting the court's question was this: