Harkishan Singh Surjeet - 1916-2008 - was, at the time I interviewed him at his Delhi home, the general secretary of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), India's main Communist party. At Partition, he was a full-time party worker in Punjab. He talked about his personal memories of Partition and the madness and communal frenzy in the air at that time. He spoke about witnessing train massacres. He said that the brief period of Communist support for the Muslim League and the Pakistan demand was 'a big mistake'.
'Whatever little time, six months, you have supported that slogan, you give fillip to those sentiments. and consequentially too that Sikhs also began demanding a Sikh state. ... And there also we supported in the beginning. Later on we had given up that thing. ...
'Fortunately I was in prison ... when all these things were happening.'