50 SOCIAL SCIENTIST In the end, however, everybody was overwhelmed by the speed with which the Muslim League bandwagon rolled on.10 This was perhaps due to the skills with which the Quaid used the Pakistan card in dealing with the Congress and the British. Moreover, his reluctance to define the main contours of his future scheme was, in retrospect, a sound political strategy. By keeping his cards close to his chest, he kept his ranks united and, at the same time, heightened their expectations of a bright future in the promised dar al-Islam. He could thus channelize the diffuse sentiments of an otherwise stratified and differentiated community in support of his mission. II It was not at all easy to come to terms with a nation carved out of one's oWn homeland. There were memories on both sides of the fence, memories of living side by side for generations with a shared social and cultural heritage, memories of friends and comrades and of longstanding associations. The birth of Pakistan amid bloody and brutal violence split up thousands of families, shattered many dreams and destroyed many ideals.11 What was there to celebrate at the fateful midnight hour or at the dawn of independence? In the words of Faiz Ahmad Faiz, it was surely . . . not that long-looked-for break of day, Not that clear dawn in quest of which those comrades Set out, believing that in heaven's wide void Somewhere must be the star's last halting place, Somewhere the verge of night's slow-washing tide, Somewhere an anchorage for the ship of heartache. The partition of the country*, wrote Saadat Hasan Manto, 'and the changes that followed it, left feelings of revolt in me*. What his mind could not resolve was: What country did we belong to now, India or Pakistan? And whose blood was it that was being so mercilessly shed every day? . .. And the bones of the dead, stripped of the flesh of religion, were they being burnt or buried? . . . When I sat down to write, I found my thoughts scattered. Though I tried hard I could not separate India from Pakistan and Pakistan from India. I would repeatedly ask myself: to whom will now belong what had been written in undivided India? Will that be partitioned too? When we were not free, we used to dream about freedom. Now that freedom had come, how would we perceive our past state? India was free. Pakistan was free from the moment of its birth, but in both States, man's enslavement continued: by prejudice, religious fanaticism, by savagery.12