ONE DAY PASSED, then another, and a third day dawned. Amritsar was ablaze with the fires of hell. Mohallas with a Muslim majority had become death-traps for Hindus and Sikhs, while Muslims were being put to the sword in areas where they were in a minority. The entire city had fallen prey to hordes of looters who swept through the streets with impunity. And who were these marauders? They hadn’t come from distant lands or descended from the skies. They were the residents of the same bazaars and mohallas or had been sucked in from neighbouring villages.
Overwhelmed by the reign of terror, the city pleaded for swift intervention by the government. Phone calls were made to high officials and delegation upon delegation delivered petitions at the doorstep of the colonial masters. Do something to save us from this mayhem, they implored. But why would the masters lift a finger when they could live comfortably in their plush Civil Lines bungalows, a world away from the bedlam that had broken out within the walled city. You would have seen them act if the house of one of the Angrez lordships had been set on fire or if one of their precious staff had been killed. To make matters worse, even the handful of policemen who were seen on duty under normal circumstances had disappeared into thin air.
Sixty hours of unmitigated carnage! That’s how long it took before the wheels of our Angrez government’s machinery finally started to move. The city was placed under curfew at 2 p.m. on 8th March in a desperate attempt to restrain the marauders. Locked behind their doors, the city’s residents heaved a sigh of relief. But the semblance of peace restored by the curfew had a superficial and almost ephemeral air about it. The devastation endured by both sides over the last few days couldn’t simply be blamed on the sudden appearance of the violent mobs. Its roots lay in the festering communal divide that had grown at an alarming rate in recent months, a tinderbox that was waiting for a spark.
The fires that had obliterated houses and shops would smoulder for a while and would die down in a few days; but the fires of vendetta that had ignited on both sides were an entirely different matter. Who would venture to extinguish those fires? There was little doubt that after the widespread campaigns of arson and violence, many a resident spoke fervently about the need for restoration of peace in the city. And yet, if you were a Hindu or a Sikh, the desire for peace was accompanied by an equally ardent wish to exterminate every Muslim from the face of the earth. Nor were the Muslims far behind in their mission to decimate the Hindus and Sikhs.
It was the same Hindus and Sikhs, the same Muslims, who had lived in this city for generations. But the catastrophic events of the last three or four days had succeeded in poisoning the atmosphere to a point that Hindus and Sikhs had started to see a Muslim not just as an adversary but as the face of the Devil himself. And the Muslims saw them much the same way, too.
The curfew was extended more than once, but it did little to quell the cycle of rioting and arson. Innocent persons continued to get stabbed and hacked on the streets. Getting locked indoors during curfew hours was a pain, no doubt. And there were many who prayed that it should be eased so that they could again move about freely. But the hands folded in devotion to the gods and the foreheads grazing against the prayer mat were also seeking something else—their prayers also implored the Almighty to destroy their enemy.
As a result of the tight curfew, newspapers became a rare sight in Amritsar. Most of the important dailies were published in Lahore and reports about the violence in Amritsar had spread like wildfire. It wasn’t just the newspapers that couldn’t make their way from Lahore to Amritsar, telephone and telegraph links between the two cities were also disrupted.
Some people felt that the absence of newspapers wasn’t such a bad thing and might even be a positive development. They blamed the dailies for playing a vicious role in inciting the violence and giving a communal tinge to every incident. Yet there were others who felt that the newspapers, perhaps, were the lesser evil. Its absence had sent the rumour mills into overdrive and each narrator seemed to add his own twist. ‘Leader so-and-so has been murdered … the Shahi Mosque in Lahore has been razed to the ground … the Maharaja of Patiala is sending an armed regiment for the defence of the Golden Temple … planes have been sent to Amritsar to blow up the Golden Temple … the Sikhs of Lahore have captured an entire munitions depot … the Muslims have ordered crates of rifles and pistols from the Frontier Province … etc.’ No surprise, then, that the spate of rumours led to a rapid escalation in the situation on the ground. Those who were using daggers and kirpans to murder innocent men and women had now graduated to blowing them up with bombs. Those who were using petrol for arson had started using potash and other explosive materials to create deadly firebombs. It became much easier to just aim one of these bombs at a home or shopfront and start a fire instantly.
The innovations in instruments of death and destruction prompted many residents to review their own systems to protect their premises. Shops that opened into the streets had their wooden doors reinforced with sturdy steel plates. Some shop owners went a step further and resolutely sealed their entrances with a wall of brick and mortar.
The ogre of communal violence had now tasted blood in Amritsar and even after getting it by the bucketful, he wanted more. His insatiable thirst saw him leap from Amritsar to Lahore and then ravage the towns and villages of Rawalpindi, Campbellpur, Multan, Jhelum, and Dera Ismail Khan. Reports coming from these and other places generated a wave of terror among hapless inhabitants. Each fresh story about the heart-rending plight of the victims was like a dagger piercing their bosom. The exodus of Hindus and Sikhs gathered steam and caravans of refugees straggling along the countryside in search of safety grew longer each day. The refugee camps established around Amritsar proved hopelessly inadequate, forcing the displaced multitudes to head for cities like Patiala, Haridwar, Dehradun, and Delhi. But Amritsar was still the closest safe haven for anyone fleeing west Punjab and each day would bring a new train carrying thousands of refugees who would disembark at the city’s railway station. Most would immediately head for the Golden Temple precincts, and it didn’t take long before the entire Parikrama, the sprawling Guru Ram Das Serai and even the expansive grounds of Jallianwala Bagh were bursting at the seams.
The city’s residents lived up to their reputation of exceptional generosity and readily opened their hearts and unlocked their coffers to help the unfortunate souls. Relief committees and help centres sprouted around the city. Night-time curfew was still in place and the locals waited for it to be lifted in the morning before making a beeline towards the Golden Temple with an endless chain of baskets laden with chapatis and buckets filled with dal and sabzi. They continued all day, serving the refugees right until sunset when they were forced to heed the curfew timings and head back home. Their generosity and desire to help was exceeded only by their lack of planning and coordination, leaving the relief committees complaining about the large amounts of food being wasted.
The relief committees did their best to bring some semblance of organization. They published pamphlets and appeals and even hired town criers to go around the city and urge the people to stop expending their energy and resources in such a haphazard fashion. They created bank accounts and funds and sought contributions in cash so that they could be more effective. Some committees started their own community kitchens and advised people in their neighbourhoods to bring the food to those langars. But it would be fair to say that most of these appeals fell on deaf ears and the city’s well-meaning folks continued with their baskets and buckets the way they’d always done.
Every new wave of refugees and each story about the ravages suffered by them pushed Satnam into a deeper bout of depression, his despondent state exacerbated by the fact that he had virtually nothing to do. The shop that provided him a livelihood and kept him busy had been reduced to ash. And the Unity Council, into which he had expended so much time and effort, had effectively become comatose. He desperately needed something to channel his energy and a solution of sorts soon presented itself. He would henceforth devote himself to serving the refugees. He enlisted his mother, brother, sister, and manservant into the effort, keeping them busy cooking meals, while he took the responsibility of distributing the food. This new sense of purpose brought a degree of calm to his tortured soul.