"This scenario is not a hypothetical construction. It has been staged on a very large scale in 1946, when the Muslim League felt that it was not yet sufficiently supported by the common Muslims, and that the Hindus had not yet unambiguously conceded Pakistan. To convince the former that only the Muslim League and Pakistan could protect them, and to terrorize the latter into the big concession, the Muslim League government in Bengal organized a mass killing of Hindus (the Direct Action Day). They knew fully well that the Hindus would end up retaliating by killing innocent Muslims. Upon which more Muslims would kill Hindus, etc. The important effect was that Muslims suffered at the hands of the Hindus , lost all faith in co-existence with them, and joined hands with the communalist leaders. The pogroms against the Hindus caused a lot of deaths among the Muslim population, but for the Muslim League this brought resounding success. ... What makes creating riots even more attractive, is the sympathy you get for them from secularist politicians and intellectuals. When the Muslim League killed thousands of Hindus in Calcutta, Congress leader Jawaharlal Nehru looked the other way. But when Hindu workers staying in Calcutta fled to their villages in Bihar and started killing Muslims there, the same Nehru proposed to bomb those villages from the air. When Hindus got killed, he didn't move a finger, but the killing of Muslims was enough to blow off his Gandhian facade and make him demand indiscriminate killing."