The Story of Rehabilitation

Abstract

This is the story of a Ministry of the Government of India. A dull, uninspiring theme, you will exclaim. But it is a richly evocative saga. Here are drama and passion, illimitable human suffering, heroic endeavour. Within the confines of what a Ministry set out to do and what it accomplished, you find every element of a Greek tragedy. Only everything is multiplied a thousandfold. You have men whose reason is overthrown, men plunged into the depths of anguish. Impenetrable gloom shrouds the story of their purgatory. But, as in the ancient legends, there is expiation and the slow return to blessedness. These, then, are the ingredients of our chronicle. It has its beginnings in the vivisection of our country, the rending asunder of territories in which people worshipping the one God under different names had lived in peace and amity as brothers, as all true religions teach them to do. A new and pernicious doctrine had come to poison men’s minds—that religion divides instead of uniting. And men’s minds were warped; they forgot their humanity and turned upon one another with the ferocity of jungle beasts. Arson, rapine and murder were let loose. People were uprooted from their homes and sent fleeing pell-mell for sanctuary. It was as if the lid had suddenly been ripped open from a boiling cauldron. Fear, suspicion and hatred came to dwell where there had been only friendship and common brotherhood.