been Patel’s. (The Home Ministry under Patel conducted a campaign
of petty harassment not merely of Muslims, but also of communists;
conveniently, as in some cases in which Nehru intervened, the communist
in question was also a Muslim.) Nehru’s continued insistence that a
minority was entitled to be nervous about the activities of a majority, and
that it was therefore the majority’s duty to assuage the fears of minorities,
was a more plausible approach to the problem than demonstrations of
official power that could be construed as ‘Hindu’; he was able to persuade
Patel that he should, at least publicly, take this position.
Nehru was in no doubt that the violence had been planned and
orchestrated by communal organisations. ‘[W]e have had to face a very
definite and well-organised attempt of certain Sikh and Hindu fascist
elements to overturn the Government or at least to break up its present
character,’ Nehru wrote to Patel. ‘It has been something much more
than a communal disturbance.’^7 Meanwhile, the practical business of
bringing violence to an end ultimately boiled down to a question of law
and order in which the army and the police were the main instruments- consternation at the number of deaths in army or police firings was
balanced against a sense of the numbers that otherwise might have been
lost in communal violence. Of greater concern, however, were the sectarian
activities of some police forces who seemed to have been infiltrated by
the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the stormtroopers of the Hindu
Mahasabha and its ideological allies. The government eventually resorted
to colonial measures such as collective fines, used not so long ago during
the Quit India movement. Nehru himself announced this measure on
September 28. On the night of September 29, armed men from neigh-
bouring villages attacked a ward in a hospital in Delhi, killing four
Muslim patients and wounding twelve. The district magistrate imposed
a collective fine of ten thousand rupees on each of the two villages.
By October the worst of the violence in Delhi seemed over. About
120,000 Muslim evacuees from Delhi had been placed in refugee camps
at the Purana Qila, recently the site of the Asian Relations Conference,
and at Humayun’s Tomb. Nehru recognised that they would have to be
resettled in Delhi in a way that did not isolate small groups of Muslims
in non-Muslim areas – reluctantly, therefore, he was forced to accept a
ghetto principle. The crisis had also reinforced differences between Patel
and Nehru. Nehru had several times intervened in matters within Patel’s
jurisdiction as home minister, largely because he could not trust Patel to
172 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55