The Sixth River : A Journal from the partition Of India – Fikr Taunsvi, Tr by Maaz Bin Bilal

Description

The Sixth River is the journal Fikr Taunsvi—born Ram Lal Bhatia—wrote from August to November 1947 as Lahore disintegrated around him. His identity reduced, overnight, merely to a Hindu in his beloved and cosmopolitan city, he is angry at the shortsightedness and ineptness of Radcliffe, Nehru, Gandhi and Jinnah. In the company of likeminded friends such as the poet Sahir Ludhianvi, he mourns the loss of the art and culture of Lahore in the bloodlust and deluded euphoria of freedom. He is bewildered when old friends suddenly turn staunch nationalists and advise him to either convert or leave the newly created country. And then the unspeakable trauma that millions are facing during Partition reaches Fikr’s doorstep when a neighbour murders his daughter, and he is eventually forced to migrate to Amritsar in India