chain stretching from north to the south and from east to the west. It was a human wall without a break," Biman Basu, leader of the Communist Party of India (Marxist) in the eastern West Bengal state told Reuters. Senior communist leaders and about six million people held hands in a chain along 3,500 km (2,190 miles) and vowed to maintain peace and communal harmony, he said. In state capital Calcutta, thousands of people joined the chain on the north-south axis of the city. "The chain was made on national highways and it zig-zagged in the towns," Basu said. India attained independence from British rule on August 15, 1947.