‘Yes, Bhaiji, you may be right,’ said another youth. ‘But Lal is dead: why bother about him? The police will do that. Let Jugga, Malli and Sultana settle their quarrels. As for the babu, for all we care he can sleep with his mother. Our problem is: what are we to do with all these pigs we have with us? They have been eating our salt for generations and see what they have done! We have treated them like our own brothers. They have behaved like snakes.’

The temperature of the meeting went up suddenly. Meet Singh spoke angrily.

‘What have they done to you? Have they ousted you from your lands or occupied your houses? Have they seduced your womenfolk? Tell me, what have they done?’

‘Ask the refugees what they have done to them,’ answered the truculent youth who had started the argument. ‘You mean to tell us that they are lying when they say that gurudwaras have been burned and people massacred?’

‘I was only talking of Mano Majra. What have our tenants done?’

‘They are Muslims.’

Meet Singh shrugged his shoulders.

The lambardar felt it was up to him to settle the argument.

‘What had to happen has happened,’ he said wisely. ‘We have to decide what we are to do now. These refugees who have turned up at the temple may do something which will bring a bad name on the village.’

The reference to ‘something’ changed the mood of the meeting. How could outsiders dare to ‘something’ to their fellow villagers? Here was another stumbling block to logic. Group loyalty was above reason. The youth who had referred to Muslims as pigs spoke haughtily: ‘We would like to see somebody raise his little finger against our tenants while we live!’

The lambardar snubbed him. ‘You are a hotheaded one. Sometimes you want to kill Muslims. Sometimes you want to kill refugees. We say something and you drag the talk to something else.’

‘All right, all right, Lambardara,’ retorted the young man, ‘if you are all that clever, you say something.’

Listen, brothers,’ said the lambardar lowering his voice. ‘This is no time to lose tempers. Nobody here wants to kill anyone. But who knows the intentions of other people? Today we have forty or fifty refugees, who by the grace of the Guru are a peaceful lot and they only talk. Tomorrow we may get others who may have lost their mothers or sisters. Are we going to tell them: “Do not come to this village”? And if they do come, will we let them wreak vengeance on our tenants?’

‘You have said something worth a hundred thousand rupees,’ said an old man. ‘We should think about it.’

The peasants thought about their problem. They could not refuse shelter to refugees: hospitality was not a pastime but a sacred duty when those who sought it were homeless. Could they ask their Muslims to go? Quite emphatically not! Loyalty to a fellow villager was above all other considerations. Despite the words they had used, no one had the nerve to suggest throwing them out, even in a purely Sikh gathering. The mood of the assembly changed from anger to bewilderment.