Walking through Noakhali
February 27, 2023
While I enjoyed the warm weather we’ve had in February, I wasn’t progressing on my goal of 30 miles in 30 days. Yesterday was overcast, but I managed a 3 mile loop through the neighborhood, which I usually only observe through a car window. Walking reduces the experience to the granular level; you can appreciate the little details. One of the most powerful stories of Gandhi’s walks took place at the end of his life.
By the middle of 1946, the British were preparing to leave India, but the question of what it would look like was still undecided. Similar to calls for a national divorce in America today, a vocal minority was demanding the country be partitioned along religious lines. To make the case that Hindus and Muslims were incapable of living together peacefully, the Muslim League organized a day of “Direct Action” on August 16, which took the form of riots in Kolkata that left thousands upon thousands dead.
Kolkata was the first domino to fall in a wave of violence that would culminate with Gandhi’s assassination sixteen months later. The second was in Noakhali, a Rhode Island-sized district in eastern India. In October, reports of killings and forced conversions by the Muslim majority had reached Gandhi, and he set off for Noakhali the following month, determined to demonstrate Hindu-Muslim unity and keep India undivided.
Gandhi said in a speech, “The earth of Noakhali… is a magnificent carpet to walk on. It reminds me of the soft grass I had noticed in England.” The religious riots had left that ground soaked with blood; at first, thousands of Muslims, who made up around 80% of the area’s population, attended Gandhi’s prayer meetings. The dozen companions who arrived with him dispersed in different directions, carrying the message of peace and holding their own interfaith meetings. Hindus began to move about freely again.
Over the winter, Gandhi walked to 47 villages, often singing “Walk Alone” as he traveled, his favorite song by the poet Tagore. But he became less welcome as the months went by; Gandhi found trash deliberately placed in his way, including human feces. Always a servant of the people, Gandhi would clean up the messes and continue on, easing the journey for future travelers. Even more humbling, he walked the narrow paths barefoot out of respect for the dead.
On February 27, 1947, Gandhi met with Fazul Huq, a local Muslim leader who had threatened to push him into the water if he came to his district. Fazul Huq now said that was only a joke, but he encouraged Gandhi to leave Nokhali. A third domino had fallen in Bihar, and thousands of Muslims had been killed by the Hindu majority there. The next day, Gandhi announced he would go to Bihar, still determined to demonstrate the unifying power of nonviolence.
Have you ever given up on a project in order to undertake a more difficult one?