On a clear night in early 1947, the family linger in chairs in the courtyard. Dinner is over. The sky is studded with stars. Bei-ji reaches to take a cup from the servant and, without warning, it crashes to the ground. ‘What a clumsy …’ Papa-ji starts. Then he sees, among the shards at Bei-ji’s feet, a rock the size of a fist. From over the wall there is shouting, angry shouting, then another rock arcs into view. Then another. And another. They smash to the ground in succession. ‘Inside!’ Papa-ji bellows. Everyone jumps to their feet and rushes for shelter. Bei-ji is crying.
‘Who threw the rocks?’ I ask.
‘It was a neighbour. A Muslim. I don’t remember his name, but I can picture him. He had a small white beard, a cruel sort of face, tallish. He wasn’t a friend. Then he started shouting obscenities.’
‘What kind of thing?’
‘About raping your women. I remember being shocked. I had never heard that kind of language. My father was horrified. He was King of the Castle in Sargodha and everybody respected him. We were all stunned. Soon after that, Priti and I were sent away from Sargodha, to the hills.’
After the Calcutta killings, cooperation between Congress and the Muslim League all but evaporated. Nehru’s Interim Government operated from September 1946, but there was no real working together. Initially, the Muslim League refused to join. Cajoled by Wavell, they eventually did, and appointed Liaquat Ali Khan, a talented, London-trained barrister, as Finance Minister. Baldev Singh, the Sikh leader from the Punjab, held Defence. But it was a Cabinet that never properly functioned and was then conveniently forgotten.
On the ground the communal situation was dire. The police, Wavell warned, could no longer be relied on to act impartially. A military man, he was not one to panic, but pessimism took hold. The Indian leaders seemed unable to compromise and Whitehall was unable to formulate policy. So Wavell sent London a ‘breakdown plan’ that sketched out a phased withdrawal and advised that a firm date for doing so be set. Wavell’s proposals were considered ‘defeatist’ and Attlee set in motion plans to replace him. The man selected was Lord Louis Mountbatten, whose style and persona made him a mirror image of Wavell – easy, confident manner, brimming with ego and charm. A different approach, it was hoped, might break the deadlock.
In February 1947 Attlee announced Mountbatten’s appointment as the last of the King’s representatives in India. British rule, he promised, would end no later than June 1948. The British hoped the deadline would inject some urgency into the constitutional talks and create a spirit of compromise. This wasn’t to be. With the end-game near, the scramble for position intensified. Congress demanded the Muslim League be dismissed from the Interim Government. The Muslim League resolved to dislodge the Unionist Government that was still clinging to power in the Punjab. If Pakistan were to be realised, controlling the Punjab was key.
Khizr Tiwana’s Unionist Government represented the Old Order. Papa-ji was a part of this order and it was breaking down. For years, Jinnah had tried to persuade Khizr to abandon the ‘Unionist’ name and regroup as part of a Muslim League Coalition. Khizr held out but, with a date now set for Britain’s departure, Khizr saw the writing on the wall. Without British support there was no future for Unionism in the Punjab.
All the time, Muslim League-inspired agitation was growing. Hartals closed shops and people took to the streets. Volunteer movements – the Muslim League National Guards and the Hindu RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) – headed by demobilised soldiers were reportedly training with lathis and knives.
In an attempt to keep order, Khizr banned these paramilitary groups and all processions. But when Muslim League officials were arrested, angry crowds gathered in defiance of the ban. Tear gas dispersed them, but they came back. They were drawn by speeches that dripped with contempt for Unionists, who were said to be holding back Pakistan. Khizr reversed the ban, but to no effect. Contempt turned to menace. Outside Khizr’s house in Sargodha, where Anup’s wedding reception had been held a few years before, there were now mock funerals, attended by veiled women, to mourn the ‘deaths’ of Khizr and his ‘traitorous’ Unionist ministers.
The pressure on Khizr was intense and on 3 March 1947 he resigned, to triumphalist celebrations from the Muslim League.
The following day, emotion running high, Hindus and Sikhs staged a counter-demonstration. On the steps of the Punjab Assembly Building in Lahore, under a pale blue sky, the Sikh leader Master Tara Singh unsheathed his sword and declared, ‘O Hindus and Sikhs! Your trial awaits you … our motherland is calling for blood, and we shall satiate the thirst of our mother with blood. We crushed Mughalistan and we shall trample Pakistan … I have sounded the bugle. Finish the Muslim League.’
Violence erupted. In Lahore there were random stabbings, arson attacks and bomb blasts. Then the mayhem spread to the countryside, mainly near Rawalpindi and Multan. In a spree of organised killing, mainly Sikh villagers were slaughtered. Men, women and children were felled in attacks led by Muslim League National Guards and condoned by politicians.
The loss of life was horrific. The Rawalpindi violence wreaked sorrow, dislocation, destruction and anger. It was also a huge blow to Sikh pride.
My cousin Kamalbir is a good authority on Sikh history, so I asked him for some background. Mughal persecution, he explained, meant Sikhism had to toughen up. After Guru Gobind Singh’s father and sons were killed by the Mughals, he decided enough was enough. In 1699 he created the Khalsa, a fraternity to defend the religion. Membership was marked by five outward symbols, ‘the five ks’. The most distinctive was long unshorn hair (kesh) worn, as Kamalbir does, in a turban. The most alarming, for an opponent, was the kirpan, a curved dagger or sword (not carried by Kamalbir).
The Guru explained to the faithful (in a letter copied to the Emperor Aurangzeb) the circumstances when it was justified, even noble, to fight. From then on, a guerrilla organisation known as the jatha would respond to a call to arms. Over the coming centuries, bravery in battle and martyrdom became leitmotivs of the Sikh tradition. So, in early 1947, with Sikhs having threatened to finish off the Muslim League, their ensuing slaughter felt like a defeat and a humiliation that had to be avenged.
A few weeks after the Rawalpindi violence, two hundred and fifty miles away in New Delhi bagpipes played as Lord and Lady Mountbatten stepped down from their gilded landau carriage outside the Viceroy’s House. The new Viceroy, dressed in white naval uniform, ascended the steps where Wavell was waiting.
It was the sort of polished display of pomp and ceremony at which Britain, then and now, excels. But as everyone knew, beneath the surface British authority was crumbling. The absence of a political settlement was creating a vacuum that incubated fear, paranoia and hatred.
Worried Provincial Governors gathered to meet and brief the new Viceroy. They left wondering if they had been heard. Mountbatten arranged to meet the Indian leaders, face to face, one by one. Gandhi produced a startling proposal: that Jinnah be invited to head the first government of an independent united India.
I remember being told this by Dip as a child. The telling conveyed Gandhi’s generosity, his love for India and Jinnah’s beastly ingratitude. But according to Ramchandra Guha, Gandhi’s was a ‘grand but futile gesture, admirable in theory but hopelessly unworkable in practice’. Nehru and Patel dismissed it and it was never put to Jinnah. In any event, Mountbatten soon concluded that Jinnah would accept nothing less than the transfer of power by the British to a new sovereign state, Pakistan. The impetus for an All-India solution was strong, unstoppable even. Despite warnings from the provinces where Partition would take effect – Punjab in the west and Bengal in the east – it appeared to be the only solution on which the All-India parties could agree.
Nehru was determined to avoid the Balkanisation of India. Ceding too much power to the provinces would lead, he feared, to the country fracturing into a host of squabbling secessionist states. He had grand plans to reform and modernise India – to alleviate poverty and end social ills – for which a strong centre was essential. Partitioning India was the price. If that meant being freed from wrangling with the Muslim League, so much the better.
The Sikhs, our family among them, stood to lose most by Partition. Most were bitterly opposed to Pakistan. Communal relations had deteriorated and they feared becoming ‘serfs’ in their own homeland. After the Round Table Conference they argued for an independent Sikh state, Khalistan, but this was viewed as a tactic to stop Pakistan and given short shrift. According to Khushwant, as the prospect of Pakistan became more likely, many Sikhs lost faith in their leaders and started to arm. After the war the Punjab was volatile and awash with weapons and disgruntled demobilised soldiers, both Muslim and Sikh.
On 2 June 1947 Mountbatten presented Nehru, Jinnah and Baldev Singh with a plan for Partition. Power would be transferred to two sovereign states, India and Pakistan. The Punjab and Bengal would be partitioned. The princely states would be invited to join either India or Pakistan. Gandhi did not endorse the plan, but he did not break his day of silence to oppose it.
On 3 June the four men jointly presented the plan on All India Radio. None did so with enthusiasm.
Mountbatten spoke first:
Since my arrival in India at the end of March, I have spent almost every day in consultation with as many of the leaders and representatives of as many communities and interests as possible …
Nothing I have seen or heard in the past few weeks has shaken my firm opinion that with a reasonable measure of goodwill between the communities, a united India would be by far the best solution to the problem.
For more than a hundred years 400 million of you have lived together and this country has been administered as a single entity. This has resulted in unified communications, defence, postal services and currency; an absence of tariffs and customs barriers and the basis of an integrated political economy. My great hope was that communal differences would not destroy all this.
My first course, in all my discussions, was therefore to urge the political leaders to accept unreservedly the Cabinet Mission Plan of 16th May 1946. In my opinion, that plan provides the best arrangement that can be devised to meet the interests of all the communities of India.
To my great regret it has been impossible to obtain agreement either on the Cabinet Mission Plan, or on any other plan that would preserve the unity of India. But there can be no question of coercing any large areas in which one community has a majority to live against their will under a government in which another community has a majority and the only alternative to coercion is Partition.
But when the Muslim League demanded the partition of India, the Congress used the same arguments for demanding, in that event, the partition of certain provinces. To my mind this argument is unassailable. In fact neither side proved willing to leave a substantial area in which their community have a majority under the government of another. I am of course just as much opposed to the partition of provinces as I am to the partition of India herself and for the same basic reasons.
For just as I feel there is an Indian consciousness which should transcend communal differences so I feel there is a Punjabi and Bengali consciousness which has evoked a loyalty to their provinces.
And so I felt it was essential that the people of India themselves should decide this question of partition …
At a press conference after the address, Mountbatten discussed consulting the people. A plebiscite would be ideal, he said, but the need for a quick answer made it impractical. As elections had been held the previous year, Legislative Assemblies in the Punjab and Bengal would be asked to vote on the plan.
The Sikhs, Mountbatten acknowledged in his address, posed a special problem. The Punjab was their homeland. Gurdwaras were scattered throughout the region, as was the Sikh population. But they were not in a majority anywhere.
This valiant community forms about an eighth of the population of the Punjab, but they are so distributed that any partition of this province will inevitably divide them. All of us who have the good of the Sikh community at heart are very sorry to think that the partition of the Punjab, which they themselves desire, cannot avoid splitting them to a greater or lesser extent. The exact degree of the split will be left to the Boundary Commission on which they will of course be represented.
‘[T]hey themselves desire’. When I read these words, I paused, then re-read them. Could the Sikhs really have wanted to partition the Punjab? I can’t square it with what Dip has told me. Papa-ji’s refrain was: ‘We lived in peace under British rule; why can’t we live the same under Muslim rule?’
But this was not, Dip now says, a view shared by many Sikhs. It was certainly not a view shared by the Sikh political leaders, Ujjal Singh among them. On the front page of the Civil and Military Gazette, Ujjal Singh MLA (Member of the Legislative Assembly) was quoted as saying that after the Rawalpindi massacres it was no longer possible to work with the Muslim League. Partitioning the province seemed a lesser of evils to escape ‘Muslim tyranny’. No one, of course, foresaw the human tragedy that would follow.
In the 3 June radio address, Mountbatten brought forward the date when the British would leave from June 1948 to 15 August 1947. This allowed a mere ten weeks to divide the country, its assets and army. On any view this looks like an absurdly truncated time frame. The Commander-in-Chief, Auchinleck, advised that it would take a minimum of two years to divide safely the world’s largest volunteer army. But no leader, British or Indian, would accept such a delay. Some historians argue that, even if they had, it probably wouldn’t have worked. Events on the ground were spiralling out of control. The speedy transfer of power was considered a means to stem the escalating violence.
In the Punjab, the prospect of civil war seemed imminent. In an article called ‘Last Days in Lahore’, Khushwant wrote about 21 June 1947 when the historic Shahalmi market went up in flames. ‘After Shahalmi, the fight went out of the Hindus and Sikhs of Lahore. We remained mute spectators to Muslim League supporters marching in disciplined phalanxes chanting: “Pakistan Ka Naara Kya? La Ilaha Illallah” [What is Pakistan’s slogan? There is no God but Allah].
‘The well-to-do carried on much as before, drinking Scotch, the old bonhomie of “Hindu–Muslim bhai-bhaiism” [“Hindus and Muslims are brothers”] continued …’ But, he wrote, Hindus and Sikhs began to sell properties and slip out towards eastern Punjab. ‘One day I found my neighbour on one side had painted in large Urdu calligraphy Parsi Ka Makan [Parsee’s house]. One on the other side had a huge cross painted in white. Unmarked Hindu–Sikh houses were thus marked out.’
Papa-ji’s friends are shown into the living room. The servant withdraws, a little put out. In the early evenings the visiting gentlemen usually take some refreshment, but today they have refused. This is not a social call and their faces are grave. It is June 1947. They have come with a message that saddens them all.
‘Sardar-ji, you know the situation has become very tense. We did not think it would come to this, but now the mobs are fearless. They are protected by pirs [holy men] and other powerful people. You are no longer safe. Please go, just for a time, until the madness has passed.’
Papa-ji shakes his head. ‘No, no, this is our home.’
The men look at each other, then one drops to his knees. ‘We are begging you, Sardar-ji. Please. Take your wife somewhere safe. It will blow over and you will come back.’
It is late when Papa-ji finally closes the ledger and puts it away in the drawer. He steps from his study onto the veranda. In the moonlight he can make out the shapes of his fruit trees. He looks for a while. Then he turns, catching the scent of his favourite jasmine, Raat ki Rani, ‘Queen of the Night’. Once inside, he walks to the bedroom. Bei-ji has prepared food for the journey and is also ready for bed. The next morning they give the servants a month’s wages, lock up the house and drive away. They don’t speak or turn to look back.
I ask Dip if she knows what her parents took with them.
‘No, I don’t. Nothing valuable I am sure. My father absolutely refused to believe that it wouldn’t be possible for Muslims and non-Muslims to live together in peace. He always said, “The Muslims are our brothers. We will not be separated from them and we will return to our homes.”’
The family say that in the months leading up to Partition, Amarjit and her husband Bhagwant tried to persuade Papa-ji to send his valuable possessions to Delhi, but he refused. ‘When they finally came to Delhi,’ I was told, ‘they didn’t bring any of the gold or silver or carpets or jewellery. All they brought with them to Delhi was fresh produce from their farm and clarified ghee.’ They planned to go back once it felt safe.
Once the principle of Partition was agreed, the borders between India and Pakistan had to be decided. The boundary has become known as the Radcliffe Line, named after Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the lawyer sent from England to determine the matter. The general view seems to be that an ignorant, incompetent and harried Englishman arrived from London, drew an arbitrary line, then went back home, leaving the Indian people to an awful fate. A parting gift of Empire, if you like.
I have come to believe this version of events is unhelpfully simple. The American academic, Lucy Chester, suggests that ‘Radcliffe’s line, rushed and inexpert as it was, may in fact have minimised the violence.’ So, given what he’d been tasked to do, Radcliffe perhaps didn’t do such a bad job after all. But he will not be easily dislodged as one of history’s favourite scapegoats.
In Delhi, around the time of the anniversary, I saw a film about Partition made by a young American of Indian origin. On the way home, in the car, my cousin Geeta asked Kanchan (Ujjal Singh’s granddaughter) and her husband Tirlochan what they thought of the film. ‘Interesting,’ said Tirlochan, but ‘grossly unfair to Cyril Radcliffe’. Of course, I wanted to know more.
The next day they came to the house where I was staying. We sat on the veranda overlooking the garden. Kanchan poured the tea while Tirlochan explained. His father, I learnt, was the Sikh judge who sat with Radcliffe on the Punjab Boundary Commission.
It wasn’t the case, Tirlochan said, that Radcliffe just drew a line. In all, there were four judges from the Lahore High Court who sat with him as part of the Commission. Two were Muslim judges, Justice Din Muhammad and Justice Muhammad Munir; one was Hindu, Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan; and Tirlochan’s father, Justice Teja Singh was the appointed Sikh. It is true Radcliffe didn’t know India well or the Punjab at all, but that was considered an advantage. He arrived with no preconceptions.
In July 1947, the judges convened in the Lahore High Court to hear submissions. The Muslim League, Congress and the Sikhs were represented by teams of Counsel. So too were the lesser players, among them Christians, Anglo-Indians, the Muslim Ahmadiyya community and scheduled castes. Radcliffe, who also chaired the Bengal Boundary Commission, stayed in Delhi, where a record of the day’s proceedings was sent for him to read.
After I left Delhi, Tirlochan emailed me his father’s summary and recommended further sources I might consult. This meant another trip to the British Library. From my new home in Canonbury, I cycled through a patchwork of connecting Georgian squares, past a reclaimed industrial area and over a new wrought-iron pedestrian bridge, planted with sprouting grasses and reeds. A right, a left and then I arrived. This is one of my favourite places, despite the brutalist brick exterior. Inside, off the atrium-like core, reading rooms are filled with extraordinary collections.
There is a wealth of material here on the transfer of power, including the old India Office Records. Back in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room, I sat with a pile of volumes. By this stage I had read many historical works about Partition. But reports by those who were there and details from original documents brought these to life.
The Commission’s mandate, I read, was to ‘demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority area of Muslims and non-Muslims’. In doing so, it was also to ‘take into account other factors’.
The Muslim case for awarding an area to the future Pakistan was based on population. The Hindu retort, in disputed areas where they were less populous, was economic. A place with a high concentration of Hindu businesses and property, they argued, should go to India.
The Sikh minority argued in a similar vein: they had poured money and labour into the canal colonies that were the main source of wealth of the Punjab; they owned most of the land in central Punjab; and they paid the most tax. But there were additional ‘other factors’ the Sikhs said supported their claim to land in West Punjab. Sikhs were the rulers of the Punjab before it was annexed by the British. Moreover, the land from Ambala to the Chenab River was their spiritual home where many important Sikh shrines, including Guru Nanak’s birthplace, Nankana Sahib, were to be found.
The vibrant, historic city of Lahore, the Paris of the East as it was known, was claimed by each community, although as Pippa Virdee illustrates in From the Ashes of 1947, their histories were woven together. The Wazir Khan and Badshahi mosques are a short way from the great fort where Ranjit Singh ruled, itself not far from the Hindu-owned shops on the Mall. The Hindu judge recognised that each community had a valid claim to Lahore and proposed joint administration of the city. But had this kind of cooperation been possible, partition of the province wouldn’t have been necessary.
The summary by Justice Din Muhammad of the non-Muslim claim to Lahore gives a flavour of the Commission’s near impossible task:
Their sheet-anchor is that they own more houses, pay more taxes and run more commercial and educational institutions. But these factors can never avail the non-Muslims in depriving the Muslims of this town. Lahore has not only been a seat of Muslim Government for nearly eight centuries but has also been a cultural, religious and social centre of Islam and considering that along with this the Muslims claim a clear majority of the population, no justification can be found to attach this town to East Punjab … To deprive West Punjab of Lahore would be tantamount to robbing a living organism of its heart.
Justice Din Muhammad was equally unimpressed by the Sikh claim based on the location of their gurdwaras: ‘In the short span of history during which the Sikhs were a factor in the Punjab they produced no less than ten Gurus, and most of the shrines were built to commemorate the most insignificant incidents in their lives.’
Suggesting a more profound sense of grievance, he added: ‘The Hindus and Sikhs are born and brought up in an atmosphere of hatred towards the Muslims and this Muslim hatred is at its peak today.’
For another perspective, Justice Din Muhammad quoted William Casey, an influential Australian in India. Casey said the Muslim delay in embracing modern education had resulted in Hindu dominance of business activity in India. ‘Hindu–Muslim feeling is so keen,’ he said, ‘that the Hindu owners and managers of enterprises are careful to employ only Hindus, so that the opportunities for employment of educated Muslim youth are limited … it is not too much to say, as regards employment in the great majority of Hindu controlled businesses, that “no Muslim need apply …”’ Casey concluded: ‘I believe the principal present motive behind Pakistan is economic, the urge on the part of Muslims (particularly in the cities) to advance themselves economically.’
I looked up, pushed the book away and tried to imagine the scene.
Every inch of the courtroom is crammed. Advocates, the parties and press fill the benches, public seats and even the aisles. Counsel stands up, tugs his gown into place and launches passionately into his argument. Many shake their heads in disagreement and some cry out in protest. The judges bang their gavels and shout for quiet. Slowly the muttering dies down. The ceiling fans strain to keep conditions bearable. Counsel resumes.
Outside the court, there was none of the restraint and decorum witnessed inside. Each day a partisan press hurled insults in intemperate terms. A dry hot wind made it difficult to breathe. Feelings and fears, at fever pitch already, were ramped up further.
After ten days the advocates and judges gathered their papers and left court. The judges adjourned to Simla to reflect and confer with their chairman, Cyril Radcliffe, in the cool. But no one was greatly surprised when Radcliffe announced that ‘an agreed solution of the boundary problem’ was not possible due to the wide ‘divergence of opinion’ between the judges. In these circumstances, the three judges agreed, Cyril Radcliffe would present his own solution.
In August 1947 Anup was living with her in-laws and two-year-old daughter Subhag in Rawalpindi, which she says had been under martial law since the spring. Her husband Jagtar was serving with the army. This, her father-in-law feared, would make them a target.
Anup is lunching with friends when the servant arrives out of breath. It is very urgent, he declares. Sahib says she is to come home at once. Back home she finds a commotion. The maid is cramming clothes into a bag. The ayah (nanny) tries to soothe Subhag while she looks for her doll. Anup’s father-in-law presides, barking out orders. ‘There you are,’ he says as she enters. ‘There is no time to waste. I have organised seats on a military plane. You will go now to Delhi.’ With moist eyes, the ayah hands the struggling child to her mother.
At the airfield the Dakota is waiting. Once they board, the engine starts up. The small plane taxis briefly, then it takes off. As it loops and gains height, Anup looks down at the fields, the orchards and the bullock carts. The noise is deafening. ‘There was no time,’ she thinks. Her eyes sting as tears well up. ‘There was no time to even say goodbye.’
In the event, neither British civilians nor the British Indian Army became targets in the mounting disorder. Europeans were left unharmed as religious communities turned on each other.
Karachi, 14 August 1947.
Hundreds of journalists and visitors have come to witness and celebrate the birth of Pakistan. The ceremony is held before India becomes independent to avoid the impression that Pakistan has seceded from India. Accommodation in the city is scarce, as are furniture, stationery and typewriters. Hastily, a government is being assembled.
Relations between Jinnah and Mountbatten are tense. Mountbatten hoped to become Governor-General of both new dominions, but Jinnah declined and assumed the role himself. From Delhi intelligence comes that Hindu opponents of Pakistan will explode a bomb during the celebratory state drive through the city. Some argue forcefully that the procession should be called off, but they decide to press on.
People line the streets, jubilant and cheering. Mountbatten, dressed in full naval uniform, seated beside Jinnah, waves and smiles. The crowds are cheering the Quaid-e-Azam and giving thanks to Allah for this day. Jinnah looks tired. Only a few are aware that he is suffering from tuberculosis. He has just a year still to live.
The evening of 14 August, Cyril Radcliffe wrote a letter to his stepson:
I thought you would like to get a letter from India with a crown on the envelope. After tomorrow evening nobody will ever again be allowed to use such stationery and after 150 years British rule will be over in India – Down comes the Union Jack on Friday morning and up goes – for the moment I rather forget what, but it has a spinning wheel or a spider’s web in the middle. I am going to see Mountbatten sworn as the first Governor-General of the Indian Union at the Viceroy’s House in the morning and then I station myself firmly on the Delhi airport until an aeroplane from England comes along. Nobody in India will love me for the award about the Punjab and Bengal and there will be roughly 80 million people with a grievance who will begin looking for me. I do not want them to find me. I have worked and travelled and sweated – oh I have sweated the whole time.
New Delhi, 15 August 1947
A more comfortable ceremony ushers in the Independence of India. In the Constituent Assembly, Indian and foreign dignitaries are gathered. Famously, Nehru addresses the people:
Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny; and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.
The midnight hour, the moment of freedom, is marked by the blowing of whistles, hooters and conch shells and cries in praise of the Mahatma. The crowd that day is exuberant and good-natured. The following day, when the flag of the new Republic is hoisted, the Hindustan Times describes there being ‘a torrent of popular joy’.
The Punjab, meanwhile, is the scene of mass murder and carnage.
The boundary award was announced after the Independence Day celebrations. Radcliffe was right. Everyone had a grievance. Jinnah’s vision of Pakistan had included the whole of the Punjab. Regardless of where Radcliffe drew the line, its partition would render the country a ‘moth-eaten’ version of his dream.
The Sikhs had argued for a boundary at the Chenab River so that they would retain a sizeable homeland within the new state of India. But the boundary was drawn far to the east of the Chenab. Pakistan was awarded Lahore and Sikh hopes were crushed. They lost the birthplace of Sikhism, many gurdwaras and most of the canal colonies they had helped to create, Sargodha among them.
The Sikh leaders had warned they would fight if the boundary award went against them and, soon after it was announced, the violence escalated sharply. In the east, Sikh jathas attacked Muslim villages. The Sikh leaders, Tara Singh and Gyani Kartar Singh, tried to call them off, but they were beyond reason or control. They were well armed and organised. The west was a mirror image. In his powerful novel Train to Pakistan, Khushwant wrote, ‘the fact is, both sides killed. Both shot and stabbed and speared and clubbed. Both tortured. Both raped.’
Women experienced a particular trauma. As well as rape, many were paraded naked through streets, assaulted, mutilated or abducted. Others were killed by their own families or they took their own lives to escape being ‘dishonoured’. People fled in both directions, telling of what they had suffered or seen. Their stories prompted gruesome reprisals.
Where were the troops? The Punjab Boundary Force began operations on 1 August 1947. Its commander was Major General Rees, the senior Indian officer was Brigadier Dhigambir Singh, and the senior Pakistani, General Ayub Khan, later President of Pakistan. It was answerable to Auchinleck and through him to the Joint Defence Council composed of the Governors-General (Jinnah for Pakistan, Mountbatten for India) and Defence Ministers of the new dominions. There were British officers and some Gurkha troops, but most were Punjabis, both Muslim and Sikhs. The force was intended to be 55,000 strong, but according to historian Robin Jeffreys, it probably never got above 23,000. The area to police was vast – larger than Ireland. As well as seventeen towns it included 17,000 villages in which 90 per cent of the 14.5 million population lived. At its strongest, the force could assign four men to every three villages. That was a ratio of 1:630 of the population.
For thirty-two days, the Punjab Boundary Force tried to keep the peace. Demonstrably, it failed. In the event, Jeffreys writes, it was no match for the well-armed Muslim militias and Sikh jathas.
Sheikhupura was the scene of one of Partition’s bloodiest massacres. Over a period of just twenty-four hours, ten thousand people were killed. Among them were two hundred Sikhs shot or burnt to death in an ice factory after clashing with Muslim Baloch soldiers of the Boundary Force. When challenged by Hindu members of the Regiment, the soldiers said they had been fired on.
After this, the Punjab Boundary Force was no longer considered neutral. The risk of troops turning their fire on each other was judged unacceptably high. So, at a Joint Defence Council Meeting in Lahore on 29 August 1947, it was wound up.
As the slaughter intensified, villages emptied and columns of refugees formed.
Hindus and Sikhs began to leave West Punjab in the spring, after the killing in Rawalpindi. By Independence, some estimate that 500,000 Hindus and Sikhs had already gone. In spite of this, neither British nor Indian officials appear to have anticipated mass migration. They didn’t expect people to leave their ancestral lands. Or, they shut their eyes to the danger.
In a presidential address shortly before Independence, Jinnah had addressed the future citizens of Pakistan, hoping presumably to stem a growing exodus: ‘You are free: you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or to any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion or caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.’ Liaquat Ali Khan echoed that complete religious freedom would be allowed in Pakistan. These utterances rang hollow. For years political leaders had been whipping up fear and paranoia. It was too late to speak the language of tolerance. No one was listening.
Once violence reached uncontrollable levels, the new states had to accept an exchange of populations. They set up the Military Evacuation Organisation to move refugees across the Punjab border. At its peak, the Indian government was transporting 50,000 Hindus and Sikhs per day, by train, truck, air and foot. Foot convoys, known as kafilas, remained targets even with a military escort. These were meant to be temporary measures until the situation stabilised and, it was hoped, people would return to their homes.
For some months, since the end of 1946, Dip’s adored brother Bakshi had been suffering from high temperatures and was plainly unwell. His roommate from Government College, a young man called Quereshi, had been diagnosed with tuberculosis (TB). Papa-ji saw that, like Quereshi, Bakshi was losing weight. Another doctor confirmed that Bakshi had contracted the disease.
At that time the Lady Linlithgow Sanatorium in Kasauli, a picturesque hill station then still part of the Punjab, set among pine trees in fresh mountain air, offered the best available treatment. Bakshi was admitted there.
Dip and Priti were also sent from Sargodha to Kasauli probably in the spring of 1947, after the violence in Rawalpindi but before the Punjab became an inferno of hatred and killing.
Dip’s parents followed them later.
Dip has no clear recollection of leaving Sargodha or of being reunited with her parents. In some ways this is surprising. She has detailed recall of other earlier and less significant events, such as clover turning silver in the canal by her home. On the other hand, many people who were caught up in Partition never spoke about what they experienced. Dip was encouraged not to ‘dwell on it’ and for many years she didn’t.
Dip explains: ‘We often travelled to the hills for our holidays, usually to Simla. So, apart from worrying about Bakshi being ill, the trip would not have been especially eventful. It did not occur to us that we would never go back.’
Between August and December 1947, almost all remaining Sikhs and Hindus of West Punjab left Pakistan.
In total, 10 million people are thought to have been displaced by the Partition of India. Deaths are estimated by the historian Professor Ishtiaq Ahmed at between 500,000 and 750,000. Patrick French puts the figure at closer to a million, but it’s impossible to know the true number. The scale, and nature, of the carnage was such that it couldn’t be accurately counted.