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Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-16-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->'In the Thund'rous Air'
(June-July)
*** the background of the 1946 Calcutta Riot ***
Sir Francis Tuker
Courtesy: While Memory Serves
(London: Cassell, 1950), pp. 137-151
Heavy is the green of the fields, heavy the trees
With foliage hang, drowsy the hum of bees
In the thund'rous air
Robert Bridges
The glorious cassias, pale varied pink as chiffon dancing frocks, tore their silken purses and strewed their treasure over our Calcutta gardens.
So far, watchfully, police and Army had warded off grave communal conflict, but all knew the fatal thing was drawing ever nearer. We in the Army prayed that it might not enter the Punjab, the model province of India, from which so high a proportion of our fighting men was recruited. So long as it 'was kept out of that province our British officers could hold the Army together. With that proviso, no matter how widespread might be a communal outbreak in Eastern Command, we could deal with it. But strife in the Punjab would break up our mixed battalions of Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus, for it would surge about their very homes in riot, loot, fire and murder. It came in the end, yet the Army stood firm against it in the most wonderful way for many months. The traditional spirit of impartiality, the old spirit of pride in their regiment, held them together for longer than any could have deemed possible. I believe that this is the greatest achievement of the British in India. Political pressure, racial pressure, tribal pressure, communal pressure-all had been resisted by the Indian Army while the British officer, new and old, never faltered in his faith in his men or in his courage to lead them. Yet how simple it would have been for the soldiers to turn against those few officers.
With the sorry deterioration of that great force, the Indian Police, it was obvious that in any grave disturbances we would find the Army only too quickly committed to perform the duties of police. We disliked this. No army is equipped by nature or training to perform this role. For them it is a b@st@rd role. Much has been spoken of Imperial policing; 1 in fact a book has been written on it. We should recollect that to give such duties to an army is to misuse that army. Imperial policing should be done by those who are adapted to its requirements; such people as the Assam Rifles, the Frontier Militias, the Eastern Frontier Rifles and so on-quasi-military bodies, well armed and yet trained and authorised for the most exacting policing duties. An army can only exert its power when it has an enemy and when it is permitted to use its weapons to the full, and freely, against that enemy. To tie it about with restrictions and still to force it to operate is to ruin it for war. This happened to our British Army in the inter-war years when it was neither equipped nor trained for war. To a lesser extent, due chiefly to its exclusive attention to the western frontier of India, this also happened to the Indian Army.
We foresaw this misuse of the Army and, while we strove to put off the day of its beginning, we did what we could to prepare ourselves for it. From the 15th August 1947 the Indian Army was no more than a police force, ill adapted to the work, still restricted in the use of its weapons and without an enemy at whom to strike. For these reasons the Sikhs were enabled, with inferior arms, to conquer the Eastern Punjab and to spread their influence into parts of the United Provinces.
It seems to soldiers that the British are no longer of the same quality as of old for they do not grasp the nettle firmly in their hands. Perhaps it is because it has become so easy to refer affairs to others at a distance who are really not sufficiently informed to make far-sighted and well-judged decisions: perhaps it is that they just lack faith in themselves.
In visualising Pakistan we did not expect to see either Calcutta torn out of Muslim Bengal or the Punjab divided in half. The Punjab was, in so far as any province could be, an economic unit and a well administered one. Almost the same words can be applied to Bengal but without the same stress on its administration. Western democracy could not possibly suit this medieval India. At the best her provinces must be governed by oligarchies. That would mean government by one party and therefore by repression, for that party could not afford to allow its opponents into power for a long time for fear of their reprisals. The parties now were Muslim League and Congress. It was unlikely, with the rising tide of communal feeling, that any sort of coalition could last in those provinces. It therefore seemed that the right course was to denude other provinces of their British I.C.S. and police officials and perhaps army officers, and to concentrate them on those two provinces so as to keep the peace while the oligarchic parties, the Muslim League in these cases, were finding their feet and taking charge. The Sikhs would have been kept within their former province and, if they chose to rise in revolt, would have had one master and a stern one, with whom to deal. It was probable that they would not therefore rise. The Punjab being to us the crucial province and the Sikh problem its crucial problem, it was very plain that the safety of India depended on not letting the Sikhs take the bit between their teeth.
Here again it stood out that the Army must be divided into its classes in order to dispose it suitably for our aims to be put into practice.
From the views here expressed we did not waver during the coming months. .
It may seem strange to a military reader that soldiers should have so immersed themselves in political considerations that they formed such definite ideas of their own on the manner of handing over government to Indians. The reasons are not far to seek. Firstly, we had to keep a very watchful eye on the Punjab; secondly, with the failing administration and the failing police, we might at any moment be forced to take charge and so we had to have clear before us in our own minds the object to which we would then devote ourselves. Further, whatever the Indian Press might say about 'Asylum', however much timidity they might read into its plans, it was a
fact that even at this time the habit of violence and hatred which political parties had so carefully incubated for so many years might very easily have generated a violent outbreak against Europeans, particularly in Bengal and Bihar where the population was the most volcanic and unbalanced. We had, therefore, to look a long way ahead and to keep our fingers on India's political pulse.
The communal quarrel was the one to which all eyes were turned. On the 10th July we nearly had a big flare-up in Calcutta. Some passengers on a tram had objected to the slowness of the service and assaulted the driver. For this, the tramwaymen refused to work that afternoon, thus suspending the tram service. This introduced a nervy atmosphere. Later in the day a Muslim boy was struck by a football kicked by a Hindu youth and a fracas at once developed in which several people were injured.
Later in the week a ten-ton lorry knocked down a child, producing another small communal riot. With the Viceroy as intermediary the two great parties were haggling and protesting, with, it seemed to us, little intention of making any real headway towards a suitable scheme for governing India by Indians. On the 22nd July Lord Wavell issued a proposal to them to form an Interim Government to look after the Country's affairs until such time as it became possible to progress by agreement towards something more permanent. This proved to be the spark which fired the charge in Bengal and India. It was soon apparent that the Muslim League would not accept the proportion of representation in this government offered to them by the Viceroy. I will not pursue the matter here for I am concerned with those things which affected the Army rather than with the negotiations of our patient Viceroy in his further endeavours to find common ground on which Hindus and Muslims could meet to govern their country.
Up to the end of July, while irritations became more and more acute, it seemed on the surface that whatever was likely to happen would not be much deadlier than the February rioting. Nevertheless, since the source of emotion was deep and broad, we ordered two Gurkha regiments into Calcutta from Assam and North Bengal. It was good that we did so. These would bring our Calcutta garrison up to four British battalions and one artillery regiment and five Gurkha and Indian battalions.
In Bihar there was a small riot which the police put down by using their rifles. Then the Congress Party elected to proclaim the 9th August, the anniversary of the 'Quit India' resolution of 1942, as a day for demonstration and processions. The Muslim League was not to be outdone, so Mr. Jinnah, while rather hazy as to his real intention, announced that 16th August was to be 'Direct Action Day'. It seemed that this really meant that since the Muslims could not get their Pakistan by negotiation, they were to get it by direct and forceful action. Most Muslims, the more simple and vigorous, certainly read that meaning into Direct Action Day. So we had two fences to ride at -9th August and 16th August.
Throughout these months, before the final terrible outbursts of late 1946 and of 1947, we always had before us some day or other as our next time of crisis, watching its approach with intensity and its quiet passing with relief. Festivals, political days, strike days, and so on-every week held its one or two days.
It seemed that the Muslim League ministry of Bengal had no intention of resigning as part of the direct action programme. Power was still too delightful a possession for that, while there was the horrid possibility of a resentful opposition taking up the reins that they would have dropped. So we hoped that all the direct action that was contemplated would be a boycott of Hindu shops and business and a campaign of 'Buy Muslim'.
Muslim interference with Hindu processions and speeches on August 9th was a serious possibility. Our students were still mischievously busy. They thought it good to hold a meeting in Calcutta early in the month in order to point out how the I.N.A. had shown the way to cementing together the two communities and to accuse the British of deliberately causing disunity between Muslim and Hindu for their own nefarious ends. They forgot that whatever limited communal unity there had been in the I.N.A. was only produced by hatred of the British, who were thus, oddly enough, the cementing material even in this undesirable body. Major-General (sic) Chatterjee of the I.N.A. was present, eulogising the Sikhs for their part in the I.N.A. and for the sacrifice of their lives in the cause of freedom. A year later the feelings of Hindus for Sikhs were somewhat altered.
Even in Orissa students found a chance for public action, making wild speeches proclaiming their intention to sacrifice their lives in order to prevent the Orissa Congress Government from constructing the Hiralund dam in the Mahanadi river, a project which these young men held to be simply a device to save Cut tack, the capital, from flooding at the expense of poor Sambalpur!
Bihar railways were still plagued by students who had now become so lawless that the railway police feared for their lives if they attempted to curb their rowdyism or to insist on their taking tickets. Communication cords were pulled and trains stopped wherever it pleased these young men.
On the 24th July the Calcutta Students Federation organised a procession and a meeting in order to demand that the Bengal government should release the rest of the political prisoners, those who were in for really serious offences under criminal law. About five hundred students bearing banners reached the gate of the Legislative Assembly, the police having sensibly let them approach unhindered. Here, a small body of police tried to stop them but the Speaker of the Assembly intervened, letting them into the grounds where they squatted on the grass. Another student procession, over two thousand strong, now approached, so the police found themselves between the inside squatters and the outside demonstrators. Those inside then climbed up on to the balconies and into the rooms and stopped the budget debate with their noise. Some sergeants and constables were roughly handled.
At last the Prime Minister himself came out and addressed them through a loud-speaker, telling them that he would review all cases of political prisoners.
The students then retired, having gained a complete victory. One of the colleges went on strike because thirty students who could not appear for the last examination had produced medical certificates and now demanded to be examined. This demand was heartily supported by the rest. The strikers also objected to certain restrictions that had been placed on the college magazine.
On the 1st August Calcutta Muslim League students held a meeting at which they urged all and sundry to concentrate on destroying the' British' Government and on driving the British out of India, the arch-exploiters of humanity. All this was quite unexceptionable and would have been harmless if it had not led them on to declare that should the Congress ally itself with the British then it would be hostile. They ended by declaring that the establishment of Pakistan would rid the world of all exploitation and domination. The trouble was that many were now describing the Viceroy's intention to set up an Interim Government as an attempt on his part to ally the British with Congress against the Muslims.
The Hindu Mahasabha and the Rashtrya Swayam Sewak Sangh (R.S.S. Sangh), the militant body of the Mahasabha, were naturally making headway, using the rising tide of Muslim opposition to induce more recruits to join the banner of Hindu bigotry. In Bihar, Muslim enmity was stirred up, and consequent Hindu bellicosity appeared round about the R.S.S. Sangh training camp at Gaya with its public displays by many hundreds of volunteers. Bihar had a big Hindu majority. This showing-off roused the martial soul of Hindu Biharis.
In Bengal, also, the Mahasabha was active, encouraging Hindus to prepare secretly against any future communal trouble. All, even the goondas, were to be trained in staff and dagger play-as though goondas needed training!
Not to be outdone, Mr. Sarat Chandra Bose, brother of the plump Subhas,2 was organising his Forward Bloc in conjunction with Shah Nawaz, ex-I.N.A., who was' operating, in North Bihar. The Bloc was to create a revolution (it always is to create a revolution but never succeeds) as the only way to independence. To achieve its end it also now formed its own body of volunteers, not a formidable army. To reinforce itself it also tried to get its hands on the Bihar police, the ever-ready instrument of pretty nearly any political mischief-maker. The police gave the Bloc quite appreciable support in the shape of purses.
By mid-July J. P. Narain's R.S.P.I.3 army in Calcutta had reached the stage of squad drill.
All the time the Muslim League was preparing itself for the struggle that lay before it. Its volunteer body, trained in aggressive methods, was daily increasing in numbers and tightening up its organisation. It now came into the daylight as the National Guard, the M.L.N.G., by officially opening its premises at 5 Wellesley Street, Calcutta. Its aims were to protect Muslims and Muslim interests, for every man's hand in the world seemed to be against their people. In particular they held that the British regarded them as hostile. It was at first sight strange to us how often the Muslims of India repeated that the British treated Muslims as their enemies, but on reflection it was found to be not so strange after all. There was Palestine, there was a Viceroy who to them seemed to be intent on putting them under the power of a Congress central government, and there was a European group in Bengal which would not now vote in the Bengal Assembly when it was sure that its vote would tip the scale in favour of Muslims.
Towards the end of the month we were apprised of the programme for Direct Action Day. I t was to follow that of the recent general strike of which I shall later speak. Oddly enough, all Communists, anti-fascists, and, logically enough, all anti-imperialists were asked to join in sympathy. There was to be a meeting at the Ochterlony Monument some three to four hundred thousand strong. Before that, prayers would be said at all mosques against those who oppressed the Muslims. We also expected a tram strike as the Union leader was a Muslim and a Communist, and with that an attempt to hold up all buses and taxis because they were driven by Sikhs.
On the 4th August Messrs. Suhrawardy and Nazimuddin, both of them influential Muslims, spoke violently against the Cabinet Mission and the Congress, the latter saying that the Congress Party was like Hitler's party (a comparison often made privately by the British in India) and that it would be crushed as Hitler was crushed. The M.L.N.G. having ceremonially hoisted their flag at Wellesley Street a fortnight before, was present in some strength. Asre Jadid, a Muslim paper, came out with an incitement to violence for Direct Action Day.
Here I will leave the political parties and their volunteer forces all ready in the wings of the stage to make a sudden and uproarious entry later in August. We now need to turn to the highlight of July, the postal strike.
There was a good deal of labour trouble, mainly in industrial Bihar and round Calcutta. The reasons for strikes in India are multifarious and it is not infrequent for workmen to down tools because one of them has been caught stealing the property of the firm for whom he works and has therefore been discharged. So long as labour in India is so irresponsible it will be impossible to industrialise the country. The working days lost over strikes for which there are quite inadequate causes and even, such as this, thoroughly unjustifiable causes, are legion. Besides these losses there are days wasted over political agitation of some sort or other, not necessarily labour politics. We used to say that in Calcutta every day was 'A Day,' that is, a day of political activity to commemorate some event of the past or to protest against some occurrence of the present. 'Anti-Movement Day,'Â 'Anti-Partition Day,' 'Anti-Grouping Day,' 'Stop Retrenchment,' and so on: then 'Quit India Day,' 'Direct Action Day,' 'Tilak Birthday,' 'Independence Day,' and others; or a Hindu, Muslim, Sikh or Christian holiday. All that was needed was 'Anti-Agitation Day' in order, with the help of Bakr Id, Christmas, Janamasthmi, Sundays, Divali, Dassehra, Easter and a score of others, to fill the calendar right up and to allow labour to indulge in the Utopia of all pay and no work.
The lockout at the Tata foundry in Jamshedpur continued in force. The Union leader, Professor Abdul Bari, was waxing more and more violent in his views, while the efficiency of labour in this big industrial town was daily deteriorating. It looks as though the inefficiency of labour will force India's industries to mechanise their plants and be rid of inferior workmen. I was told that four times as many men were employed per ton of output in India as were employed in the U .S.A.
In mid-July the Posts & Telegraphs employees who had been threatening to strike for some time, downed tools. To meet this contingency Brigadier M. Smelt, the Chief Signal Officer, had been in consultation with provincial governments. At first only some 40 per cent of the employees were involved and only limited help was needed from us, but by the 20th July the strike had become so serious that we had to take our full part in keeping the services going. The greater part of the Command was affected but it was worst and most prolonged of course in Bengal, and particularly in Calcutta. By then the post offices of Calcutta, always dark and ill-lit, their entrances and passage-ways wet with the feet of coolies, dirty monsoon puddles for the unwary entering from the street, were choc-a-bloc with damp bags of mail and littered with papers and old envelopes under the feet of a restless mob clamouring for their letters from the few senior employees who had stuck to their posts.
We set ourselves the task of keeping open all army trunk telegraph and telephone exchanges and lines normally operated and maintained by the Posts & Telegraphs Department-a big task: of clearing all essential State signal traffic and urgent mail: of providing a telephone service for a limited number of essential civilians and government officials for whom telephone facilities were vital to enable them to discharge their responsibilities.
In the early stages the test inspectors refused work, so we clapped our British test linemen on to their jobs and there they remained throughout the strike. For nearly the whole period we had either full or skeleton staffs in all the exchanges, girls of the W.A.C.(I) and British and Indian soldier operators. We maintained courier and repeater stations and overhead trunk line routes throughout the Command, having beforehand moved our maintenance parties out into the countryside ready for the emergency. An added burden on our resources were the frequent calls for us to send out parties to repair lines that had been interrupted by saboteurs of the P. & T. staff.
In some cases our parties managed to catch the miscreants and to hand them over to the police. In many places we patched considerable gaps of stolen wire with field cable. Breaking insulators and binding lines together were the most frequent forms of sabotage. The monsoon aided the opposition to no small extent by washing away in seasonal manner telegraph posts and culverts and by casting trees and broken branches across overhead wires.
The extent of our effort is gauged by the fact that we had at one time 290 linemen out on military trunk routes alone. These routes had recently been handed over to P. & T. Department as we had demobilised our operators and maintenance parties.
Despatch riders and operators cleared over two thousand essential civil messages from the main centres alone in Bengal and Assam besides those dealt with in Bihar. At first we had trouble with picketers and had to post our own protection over post and telegraph offices where our men were working.
Essential telephone messages were dealt with from the very first under our emergency scheme. Bit by bit we increased our activities and linked up the essential civilians through our military exchanges until we had a busy and considerable traffic flowing through. Our great difficulty was that the P. & T. strikers had removed all wiring records.
At railway stations we took all military and civil official mail and delivered it to its addressees and, similarly, received it from senders and routed it on by rail.
By the 7th August the strike was called off and by the 10th the P. & T. services were once more fully manned by civilians. The only serious violence during the strike had been a series of attacks at night on the telegraphic communications to the south of Calcutta, resulting in the train services being reduced by a half for some days. But the temper of the strikers was such that the one moderate leader they possessed, who had tried to avert the strike and then to call it off, had to pack his bag in a hurry, pleading business outside Calcutta, and make himself scarce.
In sympathy with the postal strike the clerks of the Imperial Bank of India saw fit to go on strike. The gallant manager stuck to his desk in Park Street, Calcutta, and with a skeleton staff performed prodigies in handling the Bank's business. The inconvenience caused to vast numbers of people by a bank strike is unbelievable. When it is over and the clerks are back at work there are huge arrears to be made up which take months to eliminate. In the meanwhile our private current accounts are naturally in chaos.
We were to consider ourselves lucky that we had got rid of these two troubles by the time the storm burst on the 16th August. Behind these strikes was the Communist Party of India, now in competition with Mr. J. P. Narain's revolutionary socialists, headaches for the future India rather than {or us. We had cares enough.
In parts of the Command, Congress Party members, always a little mischievous and out to make trouble for the Bengal Muslim ministry, took advantage of the general confusion. They started to set up local administrations parallel to those of the constituted government.Â
The Gurkha League, a political body, was now at pains to get the Calcutta Indian public to give up its boycott and its hostility to the Gurkha community of the city. It will be recollected that this boycott started with the actions of Gurkha police in suppressing the riots of the previous February. It was a loyal and staunch effort on their part, not so much loyal to the British as to their calling as armed policemen. A shoe-maker, a semi-educated Indo-Gurkha, announced at a public meeting that the community was suffering for the doings of a handful of Gurkha police sepoys and that the Gurkhas were friends of the Indians and would, when necessary, shoot the white people and not the Indians. At the same time a Gurkha blacksmith was elsewhere saying that the purpose of the Gurkha League was to consolidate and educate Gurkhas. The black-smith's attitude was nearer the true feelings even of these domiciled Gurkhas, while the attitude of Indians towards Gurkhas was better exemplified by the report of a Gurkha officer of one of our regiments who had been on leave in Darbhanga in Bihar. During the journey back he was molested by a large party of Congressmen who pulled the communication cord time and again and generally interfered with the progress of the train. He said that even the railway authorities were showing violent bias against Gurkhas, charging them exorbitant fines for kit alleged to be overweight and refusing to allow the owner to take it with him till the fine was paid.
While on leave he could not wear uniform for he was attacked when he wore it. His opinion was that this Congress force seemed to consist of men freed by the Congress government of Bihar from the local jail together with about a dozen ex-I.N .A. ' domiciled' Gurkhas. Where he stayed the whole lawless area was in the hands of Congress law-breakers. No police were to be seen.
Our Gurkha regiments were getting restless over the lack of any declaration of policy as to what their future was to be. Many of the men took their discharge, and in some units it was touch and go whether or not seventy-five per cent of the men would ask to go. They felt they were being messed about and began to be apprehensive, for the first time in their history as British Gurkha regiments, that the British would befool them by handing them over to India.
In Bihar the Adibassis were obsessed with fear that the local Bihari Hindu would try to snatch their land away from them as soon as the British had gone. The departure of British officials from police and civil administration had now started, the gaps being filled by Indians. Lawlessness was more apparent. Criminals felt that with a disgruntled police their sins would be winked at. It was quite certain that if the left wing started a campaign of violence against the British, then the police would not lift a finger to stop the outbreak nor would their Indian officers try to encourage them to do so. 'Asylum,' was polished up in Bihar in case of accidents. More responsibility for the safety of European women and children, particularly for escorts to places of safety, was laid on the Army as it was removed from the police. Plans were made for the Army to take over police armouries immediately serious trouble started.
Except in Darbhanga, in North Bihar, it was not expected that there would be any serious communal trouble because of the small percentage of Muslims in the population. This appreciation neglected to consider the effects of fanaticism and the peculiarly sadistic nature of large numbers of Hindus.
Little has been said of Anglo-Indians in Eastern Command. Being the oldest part of British India it was full of these people. They formed a very valuable section of the community, providing large numbers of the technical staff of the railways, post and telegraph services, business firms of all sorts and, last but not least, a loyal and dependable element in the Auxiliary Forces. On the whole they were a law-abiding and self-respecting community. Because they always came out strongly on the side of law and order they were disliked by those who wished to use violent methods to gain their political ends. With the impending departure of the British these people would find themselves in a most unenviable situation. What were they to do ? One thing was certain and it was that if they stayed in India they must identify themselves with the people of the country. To this many of them were reconciled and elected to stay as Indian citizens. Others managed to get passages to England, either with promises of employment or to join relations there. A Mr. Ambler propounded to me his scheme to form a farming colony of Anglo-lndians in the Andamans under the CroWn but in the end nothing seems to have Come of it. Anglo-lndians are townsmen and they do not readily take to the life of a farmer. Some of the more timid of the community carried on a fairly successful propaganda against their brethren joining the Auxiliary Forces for fear of Indian reprisals later on. We thought they were being rather shortsighted in view of the turmoil into which we knew Hindustan must later be thrown.
If India treats these people properly and allows them to retain their self-respect and their standard of living they will serve her well. If they are ill-treated they will be the very Worst of India's goonda elements.
During the summer rumours came down from the hills, most of them untrue, about a fermenting rebellion in Eastern Tibet. It took long to mature but it did finally start about a year later and was as suddenly quashed. Tibetan traders coming through Kalimpong kept us informed of Tibet's hopes and fears. It was all very remote from India, but nevertheless of importance on the longer view, for the time when India should be controlling her own relations with her north-eastern borders.4
With all this activity about him the Indian soldier seemed to remain stolidly unmoved, representative of ninety per cent of India's population, the men of the farms and the fields and the hills-stolidly unmoved and devoted to the Army he served. The British officer kept clear of it, only intervening to explain to his men the meaning of what was passing, to show how it affected them.
We were once more compelled to refute to our men newspaper calumnies against their army. On this occasion5 we picked on one particular paper, the Amrita Bazar Patrika, which had accused our men of insulting and attempting to abduct an Indian lady from her husband, of abducting another Indian lady in Ballygunge, assaulting an Anglo-lndian nurse at Howrah, and of impeding the course of justice in a Court case. There was neither a grain of truth nor of evidence in these charges and we said so.
We explained to them the system of war awards and land grants, showing how these varied and that they were purely a matter between the individual and his provincial government. We explained our efforts to get them and their families properly accommodated, to get maternity treatment for their wives and our difficulties in the post-war confusion: how they could help to raise the standard of living in their villages by taking back with them the good habits the Army had taught them: post-war plans for the education of their sons and daughters: future prospects as to pay and allowances and what we were doing to give them vocational training and to resettle them when they left us.
The British officer trudged on quite ignorant of what the future held in store for him, either good or bad, or even if there was any career at all before him. He knew he was out of favour at court but his men trusted him and that was about all that mattered. He was shocked at the court martial and punishment of Commander King, R.I.N ., resulting from the recent mutiny in that Service, when he thought of the extreme clemency shown towards those sailors who had used their guns against their officers.
We had our troubles in the Army, but they were all minor ones of indiscipline due to bad handling by N.C.O.s, V.C.O.s or officers. They amounted to surprisingly little. We were through that part of our test.
On the night of 8/9th August a communal riot broke out in Eastern Bengal at Narayanganj, near Dacca, over Hindus insisting on erecting a pavilion for their Jalan Puja.6 The police had to open fire. In Calcutta communal feeling was rapidly rising.
Notes:
In January 1949, the R.A.F. had a sharp lesson, however undeserved, on the perils and difficulties of' policing' with Regulars, when five aircraft were shot down over Sinai by Jewish fighters. Our men had orders not to shoot till shot at, precisely the same orders as our soldiers 'policing' the North-West Frontier of India used to be given. An order of this sort is typical of those occasions when Regulars are sent out to 'police'.
Â
Netaji (leader) of the I.N.A.
Â
Revolutionary Socialist Party of India.
Â
Appendix IX, India's Mongolian Frontier.
Â
ppendix Ill, Talking Point No. .21.
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study...under_riot.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
While RSS and Hindu Mahasabha were standards of Hindu bigotry the Muslim National Guard is all about protecting Muslim rights and interests (of course they accomplished this by murdering Hindus and Sikhs but that doesn't matter).
While many Hindus are sadists, Muslim ghazis are benevolent.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-16-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The Great Calcutta Killing
(16th to 20th August)
Sir Francis Tuker
Courtesy: While Memory Serves
(London: Cassell, 1950), pp. 152-166
At the end of July 1946 I was ordered to Quetta to take part in a series of tactical discussions, the prelude to more detailed discussions to be held at Camberley in mid-August under the chairmanship of the Chief of the Imperial General Staff. Thereafter I was to take leave in England.
As I stepped into the home-bound 'plane at Karachi on the 4th August I was handed a newspaper, and with apprehension read on the front page that a new government had been installed in India-the Interim Government, under the leadership of Pandit Nehru. Some Muslims had been invited to accept office in this government. Nevertheless, Muslim feeling would without any doubt be inflamed against what they would consider to be their betrayal to a Hindu-led government. I knew then that all our forebodings of the months before would now be fulfilled. We had had our warnings of more trouble to come in Calcutta and I had, before I left Calcutta, ordered into that town reinforcements from outside-the 7th Worcestershire Regiment from Ranchi, the 1/3rd Gurkhas from Chittagong and 3/8th Gurkhas from north Bengal, Parbatipur. Before the storm broke the first two had arrived and the third was ready to entrain.
Political 'met' reports had kept trace of a pile-up of the weather ever since the February riots until now when brown cu-nimbus clouds were all about the sky.
I will first of all tell the tale of the Calcutta Killing1 for historical purposes in order to record the sequence of events. Thereafter, so that those who read may be able to absorb a little of the atmosphere which pervaded those dread events and so that they may be able to picture the people who were concerned in them, I tell some of the tale in extracts, in Appendix V, from the personal experiences of two of my officers. It is my object to present a truthful picture, a presentation of affairs in India hitherto only too seldom permitted to be seen by foreigners. Henceforth, with the end of British rule, these presentations will occur even less frequently than before. Only those who believe in living in a fool's paradise will attempt to push Reality into the wings, for its rightful place is in the centre of the stage and assuredly it will in good time, perhaps inconveniently, occupy that place. It is both leading player and central theme round which any human play must be written. One great reality of Indian politics has for years been communalism. But unfortunately the Congress Party hid it from the world, with the inevitable result that India today is decisively parted into at least two nations.
To shrink from perceiving the natural tendency of Hindustan towards an Asiatic form of Communism will lead to even greater catastrophe.
From February onwards communal tension had been strong. Anti-British feeling was, at the same time, being excited by interested people who were trying to make it a substitute for the more important communal emotion. The sole result of their attempts was to add to the temperature of all emotions, and those emotions turned fatally towards heightening the friction between Hindus and Muslims. Biased, perverted and inflammatory articles and twisted reports were appearing in Hindu and Muslim newspapers, while the leading politicians and labour leaders continued no less irresponsible in their public utterances. All this boiled to fever pitch after Mr. Jinnah had announced on the 29th July that Direct Action would be observed throughout India on the 16th August. Direct action in India could only mean action by force as a protest against the decrees of the existing Government, that is, against what was considered to be inequitable treatment of the Muslims in the interests of the Hindus.
Every one of us fully understood that Direct Action Day would certainly be a day of extreme stress in Calcutta. Reports were flowing into our Intelligence Centres in Calcutta showing the ever mounting emotions of the two communities. Nevertheless, neither civil nor military officials thought that feeling would run any higher or take any more dire course than it had taken for the past month or two, for there had been many crises and at each one serious outbreaks had been expected but had not occurred. On the 9th August the Congress Party had celebrated Remembrance Day, which was to commemorate the start of the 1942 riots in Bengal, Bihar and the U.P.- riots which had nearly brought our armies to a standstill, fighting the Japanese on the Assam border. Remembrance Day had passed off peacefully.
For the first half of August, speeches of public men of both Congress and Muslim League at large meetings in Calcutta were inflammatory and violent in their character, all directed against the opposite community. On the 15th August, an acid debate took place in the Bengal Assembly when the Bengal government had announced its decision to make the 16th August, Direct Action Day, a public holiday. The debate showed how bitterly the Hindus resented this order. One of the causes for their resentment was that, up till now, the Congress had more or less possessed monopoly rights for imposing and enforcing hartals (the closing of shops), paralysing the whole of Calcutta's transport, and for strikes: they thus strongly resented the prospect of any other competitor, especially so formidable a bidder as the Muslim League, entering this highly coveted field of political exploitation.
Of the reports coming in to us about public speeches at this time, the following are three selections which show the sort of oratory that was being displayed.
Mr. Nazimuddin,2 l speaking to a Muslim meeting on the 11th August, was reported to have said that the Interim Government, without the support of the Muslim League, would before long certainly bring about a very serious clash between the communities. Although, he said, final plans for direct action had not yet been settled, there were scores of ways well known to Calcutta Muslims by which the League could make a thorough nuisance of themselves, not being bound to non-violence as was the Congress.
As a counter-blast to this, Mr. K. Roy, leader of the Congress Party in the Bengal Legislative Assembly, addressing a meeting at Ballygunge on the 14th, said that it was stupid to think that the holiday for Direct Action Day was being decreed by the Muslim Bengal government in order to avoid commotions. The holiday, with its idle folk, would create trouble, for it was quite certain that those Hindus who, still wishing to pursue their business, kept open their shops, would be compelled by force to close them. From this there would certainly be violent djsturbance. But he advised the Hindus to keep their shops open and to continue their business and not to submit to a compulsory hartal. So Mr. Roy himself was setting the stage for the very clash that he feared. It is in the nature of all too many of the people of India that they are wont to provoke trouble rather than to be discreet and to compromise.
It was now the turn of the Sikhs, so at the same meeting a prominent local Sikh leader in a fighting address, recalled to the memory of the audience how in the communal riots of 1926 the Muslims had been soundly beaten. He announced that if rioting did start the Sikhs would back the Congress and between them they would give the Muslims a good thrashing. From this it would appear that he rather looked forward to a little battle.
So it can be seen that all those who were principally concerned were doing their best to prepare the lists for the coming joust. They could hardly have done better if they had had a combined committee to arrange the grisly tournament. As I have said, I had issued orders in July to bring three more battalions into Calcutta in order to see that the rules of the tourney were obeyed. From the examples of the riots of the previous November and February we thought that this considerable reinforcement would suffice.
On the 12th August Brigadier Mackinlay, commanding the Fortress, ordered all those units which were on an Internal Defence role to be confined to barracks and drastically restricted military movement in Calcutta for the 16th. Later, he confined all troops to barracks from the early morning of the 16th August.
'Caterpillar' broadcasts, which were our usual Internal Defence information broadcasts to all troops in Calcutta, started before 8 a.m. on the 16th and went on throughout the disturbances. August 16th, a warm, sticky, familiar day in the monsoon, broke quietly over Calcutta. The buses, taxis and rickshaws plied their trade as usual. The trams were not running as the Tramway Workers' Union always managed to add to our difficulties and to the crowd on the pavements by declaring a one-day strike whenever trouble was coming, so that their employees might not miss the spectacle.
At 7:30 a.m. we heard that Hindus had erected barricades at the Tala and Belgachia bridges to prevent Muslims from entering the city and taking their processions to the middle of the town to the Ochterlony Monument where a mammoth Muslim assembly was to be addressed at 3 p.m. by Mr. H. S. Suhrawardy, the Chief Minister of Bengal. Brigadier Mackinlay, as usual, visited Police Headquarters at Lal Bazaar about 9 a.m., finding the police not unduly worried and forecasting that, though there would be incidents, violence would not be on a great scale. The worst time was expected to be in the afternoon when the meeting broke up. During the morning the anticipated incidents occurred. Houses were burned in the north and east of Calcutta, probably due to Muslim leaders compelling Hindu shopkeepers to close their shops, and the rank and file pulling people off their bicycles and off the buses. The Hindus, on their side, were trying to prevent Muslim processions from marching through Hindu quarters of the city on their way to the meeting. Brigadier Mackinlay's impressions as to the likely extent of the trouble were confirmed on his visit about midday to the civil officials, the Inspector General, Deputy Commissioner and the Additional Secretary to the Government. The police were satisfied, although the incidents were widespread at the time, that they could deal with whatever was to come without aid from the soldiers.
Up to two o'clock the crowds were gathering round the Ochterlony Monument and our Intelligence patrols were out covering the town. Incidents were occurring. The police about Sealdah and Bow Bazaar at the north side of the city had opened fire once and used tear-gas to disperse violent mobs bent oil communal strife. Just before 3 p.m., on application from the police, the Fortress Commander ordered the York and Lancaster Regiment to be ready at once to move to Sealdah. At 3 p.m. Brigadier Sixsmith, acting as Area Commander, met the Governor and the Commissioner of Police. The last named said that the situation was out of hand because, although the police could disperse the crowds, they re-formed directly his patrols had passed on. The Governor at once set off with Brigadier Sixsmith and the Commissioner of Police to have a look at the town for himself. They saw hooliganism but nothing yet to warrant the application of military force; however, they found good reason why the soldiers should be held ready to move directly they were required. All agreed that when the soldiers came in they would keep open the main roads, freeing the police from these roads for other and more detailed work. The York and Lancaster Regiment was therefore sent at once to a position of readiness in the Sealdah Transit Camp.
Meanwhile, an immense Muslim crowd was gathered about the Ochterlony Monument and Mr. Suhrawardy was addressing them. Our patrols reported that he said that the Cabinet Mission was a bluff, and that he would see how the British could make Mr. Nehru rule Bengal. Direct Action Day would prove to be the first step towards the Muslim struggle for emancipation. He advised them to return home early and said that he had found Muslims peaceful in the course of his passage through the town and that he had made all arrangements with the police and military not to interfere with them.
Our intelligence patrols noticed that the crowd included a large number of Muslim goondas, and that these slipped away from the meeting from time to time, their ranks being swelled as soon as the meeting ended. They made for the shopping centres of the town where they at once set to work to loot and burn Hindu shops and houses.
Hitherto, south Calcutta had remained comparatively quiet, as it had been in the February riots. But shops were closed and feelings were tense.
At 4.15 p.m. Fortress H.Q. sent out the codeword 'Red' to indicate that there were incidents all over Calcutta.
There was now the usual demand on the part of the administration for more troops and for the troops to picket all over the town. This demand has been put forward in every big riot I have ever witnessed. Brigadier Sixsmith gave Mr. Suhrawardy the usual reply that the troops best fulfilled their task by keeping open the main routes and increased their effectiveness most economically by throwing out mobile patrols from these main arteries. In this way the greatest number of police were released for their proper duty of preventing crowds uniting on the main routes and at the nodal points.
The situation was clear in the neighbourhood of the areas dominated by the troops but, as was later apparent, obscure, for lack of information, in the bustee (slum) areas.
At 6 p.m. curfew was clamped down allover the riot-affected districts. At 8 p.m. the Area Commander received a sudden demand for troops in the Howrah area. He brought in the 7th Worcesters and the Green Howards from their barracks in the north of the town. This is what they saw.
As they drove in they found CoIlege Street Market ablaze, the few unburnt houses and shops completely sacked; the road outside was strewn with charred embers, empty shoe boxes, broken furniture and other litter; the air was heavy with the fumes of gas shells the police were using to disperse the crowds. In Amherst Street looters had dragged a safe into the road and had succeeded in opening it before they were disturbed. In Upper Circular Road 'fire-bugs' were dragging lighted pieces of kerosene-soaked sacking across the road to start fresh fires, the remainder of the mob cheering them on and looting until the fires became too hot. At this time there was no evidence of the terrible killings that had taken place; the streets were clear of bodies.
At one place in Harrison Road an agitated man dashed out of a garage and after stopping the Company Commander's carrier, proceeded to pick shotgun pellets out of his leg with a penknife, the while he told how his petrol pumps had been raided by goondas. After concluding his story he solemnly presented the officer with the pellets and, with a prayer that the troops keep a close eye on his garage, disappeared into the bosom of his family, who were apparently unhurt, but who wailed loudly and incessantly either in support of his story or in sympathy for his injury. Later on, at about 5 a.m., things seemed much quieter, and it was not until well after daybreak that dead bodies began to appear in the streets and killings started afresh. It often happened that one passed along a clear street but on return five minutes later discovered several bodies, sometimes in the road, sometimes loaded on coolie barrows. Many of the bodies were newly dead, but not a killing was actually witnessed at that time.
At 3.30 p.m. the three British battalions then operating performed a combined sweep and entirely dominated the centre of the city. Curfew was imposed and at 10 p.m. we withdrew one of the battalions to Fort William to rest before further operations on the following day.
Night brought with it little cessation of the rioting, only the Roza celebrations, the daylong fast, drawing Muslims off the streets for their meals after dark. The storm had burst and this time brought with it a torrent. February's killings had shocked us all but this was different: it was unbridled savagery with homicidal maniacs let loose to kill and kill and to maim and burn. The underworld of Calcutta was taking charge of the city.
The York and Lancaster Regiment cleared the main routes about Sealdah and threw out patrols to free the police for work in the bustees. But the looting and murder went on in the alleys and kennels of the town. The police were not controlling it. Daylight showed not a sign of bus or taxi : rickshaws were battered and burnt: there were no means for clerks to get to their work. With the banks on strike for this one day, the 17th, there were all the more idle men loafing about the town.
In the middle of the morning, Sir Frederick Burrows set out with Brigadier Sixsmith, Brigadier Mackinlay and a military patrol to tour the afflicted areas. In Harrison Road they found big fires burning and large mobs assembled. The patrol went at them and quickly dispersed them, driving straight on through rioters carrying loaded sticks and sharpened iron bars. They scattered to right and left and the Governor's party drove through, but it was obvious that their mood was thoroughly dangerous. Returning by another route, the party saw a man being beaten to death less than a hundred yards away and ordered the police to take action at once. The police were slowto get out of their vehicles and before they had come into action three people were beaten down and lay dead on the road. A British police sergeant dispersed the mob with one shot.
At 11.30 a.m. the escort to the Governor stopped at the junction of Harrison Road and Amherst Street. There was a large crowd to the south in Amherst Street which dispersed as troops and police debussed and advanced towards them. To demonstrate to the Governor how the mobs re-formed, the police and troops withdrew to their vehicles, out of sight in Harrison Road, upon which the people came out of the side streets again and advanced to within thirty yards of the Governor's party. Troops and police appeared once more and the mob rapidly retreated, leaving a freshly-stabbed man in the middle of the road where they had been standing.
The night's rioting had been fierce but the bloodiest butchery of all had been between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. on the 17th, by which time the soldiers got the worst areas under control. During this period the south of Calcutta was set ablaze with the fury that had caught the north and centre: swords were being used and the crowds were charging madly hither and thither. Motor patrols of the 1/3rd Gurkhas drove into the melee. More and more dead lying in the flood of spouting watercocks were seen by our Intelligence patrols as they scoured the city. Police reports were coming in of heavy fighting allover the town and of police intervention with bullets and gas. The pall of smoke from burning buildings spread overhead between the horror below and the light monsoon clouds of heaven. The dust and the sickening noise of killings rolled out from Garden Reach, Kidderpore, Metia Bruz, Beliagatia and along Lower Circular Road. Looting and destruction were in full blast all about Park Street. European householders could not leave their houses: there they and their families sat, besieged and living on the tinned foods of their store cupboards.
C.D.L. tanks with strong searchlights joined the troops at dusk and the eerie flickering of their lights as they passed from street to street playing on the dead and on the devastation in which they died, made a Dore's Inferno of Calcutta.
In the early hours of the 18th, the 1/3rd Gurkhas moved into the Dock area. From then onwards the area of military domination of the city was increased. Static guards took over from police guards and a party of troops under Major Littleboy, the Assistant Provost-Marshal, did valuable work in the rescue organisation for displaced and needy persons. Outside the 'military' areas, the situation worsened hourly. Buses and taxis were charging about loaded with Sikhs and Hindus armed with swords, iron bars and firearms.
At midday, the Governor and the Army Commander set out on a tour of the city with the Chief Secretary and Mr. Suhrawardy, escorted by a combined police and military patrol. Except in the bustee areas there were no fresh mobs, but in the bustees looting, arson and murder held their horrible sway. Wherever the party stopped, hostile crowds closed in on them and heads appeared on the housetops above. One Muslim shouted to the Chief Secretary, , But you must not shoot: you will disturb the peace of our city'!
Mr. Suhrawardy was eager to expose the depredations of Hindus against his co-religionists, pointing an accusing finger at peaceful men and charging them with lying in wait for Muslims. He was asked why Hindus and Muslims could not live in friendship in civil life when they managed so well in the Army. Mr. Suhrawardy replied that Hindu and Muslim unity would not exist very much longer in the Army. He was right and we knew it. Directly the British officer left the mixed mess of Hindu and Muslim officers would part into two cliques and the parting would soon be reflected among the men.
Police and soldiers were getting tired, and the load of quelling the violence was falling more and more on the troops as the police wearied and lost heart. Raj Mohan, Jorasanko and Tarachand Dutta Streets and Baowanipore in the south fell into pandemonium. Military patrols rushed in and opened fire, wounding two of the crowd. At 3 p.m. the Command ordered the 5th Division to reinforce Calcutta from Ranchi and ordered the Norfolks in from Ramgarh and the 3/8th Gurkhas from Parbatipur in North Bengal.
On Sunday, 18th August, the York and Lancaster Regiment again left the Fort to relieve a battalion in the dominated area. However, just as they were moving out they learnt of serious trouble in north Calcutta, in the Shampuka and Jorabagan Thanas, and received their orders to move to that area and to take over control. Everything was quiet and seemed normal until they crossed Vivekananda Road, going north of Chitpur Road. The state of things from there on beggared description. Furniture, bedding, boxes and household articles of all kinds littered the road so that even the two light tanks which were leading the column had to pick their way; indeed some of the wheeled vehicles had to stop to clear debris before they could pass. Corpses became more frequent, and on the Gray Street-Chitpur Road crossing the leading tanks had to stop so that troops mounted on them could clear some of the bodies to one side to give room for vehicles to pass and disperse a fighting mob. Over one hundred and fifty bodies were cleared from this cross-road the next day and it was here that one of the chief goondas of Calcutta died fighting with a knife in each hand. His green three-ton truck was standing in Gray Street and proved of great use in the street clearing which was soon to follow. Three hundred yards farther up the Chitpur Road there had been another pitched battle and over a hundred bodies remained to witness the fact. In Central Avenue, by a Hindu temple and in the surrounding street entrances, there were another forty dead. All in all there had been what must have been the worst carnage in the city.
Early in the evening our men found a small Muslim bustee in the Bag-Bazaar Street which had been burnt down; the occupants had either fled or had been killed, the dead bodies of three children bearing evidence of the crime. The interesting part of this incident is that from three different sources we were informed that the burning of this bustee was the work of nine goondas who were paid by a named person living in the neighbourhood.
On closer inspection of the bodies in this area we found that many were horribly mutilated and in one particular place a man had been tied by his ankles to a tramway electric junction box, his hands were bound behind his back and a hole had been made in his forehead so that he bled to death through the brain. He was such a ghastly sight that it was a wonder that the soldiers who were ordered to cut him down and cover him with a nearby sack, were not ill on the spot.
The rest of that night passed without incident and in the morning the battalion had opportunity to probe beyond the streets which had occupied all its attention in the remaining hours of daylight the previous day.
This probing brought to light only one important fact that had not been discovered the previous night. There were the odd bodies in sacks and dustbins that were beginning to make their presence known, but the big discovery was that of the wholesale slaughter in the Sobhabazaar Market. The Market itself was strewn with bodies, and the tiny hovels of the shopkeepers which bounded it held gruesome evidence of the awful conflict. One room contained fifteen corpses and another twelve, but those two rooms were outstanding. At the western end of the bazaar there had been a rickshaw stand. The rickshaws had been smashed to bits and it appeared that the pullers had been massacred in toto. From among this shambles we rescued two live children, both wounded and one already gangrenous. As might be expected they were dazed and seemed half-witted; their mental and moral systems must have sustained a shock which might easily have driven them mad. They would never be the normal people they could have been. The doctor did his best with their wounds and sent them into hospital. Bodily they would mend, but mentally-a shrug of the shoulders was his verdict. Most of the dead in that market had not had the remotest idea what was happening or why.
On the afternoon and night of the 18th August the Calcutta garrison made one supreme effort and gained complete control of north Calcutta. With this success they then turned their hand to clearing the city of its dead, shepherding lost persons into the Refugee Camp and restoring confidence.
The next day, with encouragement from officers and men, shopkeepers started cautiously to open their shops and efforts were made to induce tramway workers to return to duty. Incidents continued throughout the day but it did seem that the lunatic fury of Calcutta's population had worn itself out. The stench of their murderous work of barely three days was terrible, particularly about Sealdah station, the area of which Major Livermore tells in his story in Appendix V.
On the 19th more work was done in clearing the streets and in general rescue work of destitute and injured. The Chief Minister, who throughout was more critical than helpful, alleged that the Military Rescue Service was ineffective. This meant that his staff had to be taken round to be shown what that Service was doing before they could be convinced.
The south flared up and the East Lancashire Regiment was sent there to damp it down.
In the evening the 4/7th Rajput Regiment and 3/8th Gurkhas arrived: our anxieties were now at an end. There were fresh troops to replace the tired battalions. Indian Pioneer Companies were ordered in to help clear the streets.
Bit by bit police patrols were taken out by the military and hour by hour by this means the police gained confidence and resumed their duties in the streets.
That is the bare outline of this manifestation of berserk fury. The one thing that stressed itself time and again was that had the police only known the extent of the strife that raged in the gullies and bustees on the night of the I6/I7th and on the morning of the I7th itself, troops would have been demanded earlier and the tumult more quickly quelled. In the palmy days of the Calcutta police, this information would have been gained and passed back far sooner than it was.
I do not know-no one knows-what the casualties were. On one night alone some four hundred and fifty corpses were cleared from the streets by the three British battalions. For days afterwards bodies were being recovered from sewers and tanks. All one can say is that the toll of dead ran into thousands.
By the 22nd August, despite the continuance of isolated killings, and the occasional dispersal of growing crowds, Calcutta was quiet.
The Army had had a grim time, the grimmest being the clearing of dead from the battlefield. It had served Calcutta well, not only by the use of force on the streets but also in its rescue and medical work. Our doctors had issued 7,500,000 units of anti-tetanus serum to the Surgeon General of Bengal. To no small extent our administrative services had helped to feed the city. For a short time the city was grateful to the soldiers but not for long. Newspaper attacks on the Army, unfounded allegations, began once more to appear in due time.
Trouble was now raising its head in Eastern Bengal and the 1/3rd Gurkhas were ordered off to Chittagong on the 22nd August. The Battalion reached Chittagong on the 24th to find that place in a highly inflamed condition, casualties up to the previous evening amounting to forty-five.Â
Notes:
See Map No. 2, p. 155.
See p. 380.
http://www.globalwebpost.com/farooqm/study...cutta_riot.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-16-2006
It's all Equal-Equal, Sikhs are savage and Hindus are like dogs:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<div class='quotemain'><!--QuoteEBegin-->Sir Francis Tukerâs While Memory Serves
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Chapter 36
First Fruits in Eastern Command
August-September
     It is a relief to turn from the red horrors of the Punjab to the milder climate even of our United Provinces. About this time a special representative of the Statesman made an interesting survey of reactionary activities in the United Provinces, the spirit which now appeared to us the most dangerous of all influences for Hindustanâs immediate future. It is most important, so I will give the gist of what he had to say.
     The revivalist spirit was rampant in the province, accompanied by an intolerant puritanism among the upper class. This spirit of revival found encouragement from senior leaders of the Congress no less than from humbler folk whose capacity for a comparative assessment of values was not so well developed. Sometimes the attempt to return to the past was rooted in cultural pride as was instanced by the Education Ministerâs recent instruction to school-teachers to pay special attention to the Indian classics and to Indiaâs cultural history. Very rightly he reminded them of the dangers of losing sight of what they inherited in the realms of Art and Literature and the need to preserve and develop that inheritance.
     But unfortunately the revivalist spirit was too often simply an effort to resurrect Hindu orthodoxy. There was of course also a feeling among many Hindus that the good old days of Hinduism were the best. The reaction had moved rapidly of late.
     The Vice-Chancellors of five United Provinces universities unanimously decided to adopt Hindustani as a medium of instruction. Fortunately, the Correspondent pointed out, it would take some time for the full scheme to be developed and before then the feverish zeal in favour of orthodox Hindi might have somewhat abated.
     For the Governorâs investiture on the 14th August an influential Parliamentary Secretary had ordered that dhotis {464} (full, skirt-like cotton garments) should be worn by officials. Most of the officials were used to wearing European clothes, and it so happened that this particular order was unauthorised and so not obeyed. There was no denying, however, that it had the tacit support of thousands of Hindus.
     At the investiture also the chanting of religious hymns was prominent, though the ritual was âgiven a touch of catholicityâ by the inclusion of extracts from the scriptures of several faiths.
     The revivalist movement had prompted a recent order restoring the ancient names to the great cities and rivers of the province.
     It looked very much as though the Congress ministry would cast out everything that smacked in the least of alien influence. A certain snobbery was engendered by which Congressmen pretended to treat with scorn all those whose ideas did not coincide with their ideas of a ânationalâ way of life. Their conception was of a crude austerity perpetuating joyless life for rich and poor alike. Ministers did no entertaining, so took little social interest in anything outside politics and showed intolerance for those who wished to live in any other way.
     The Correspondent quoted an instance of a Minister rebuking a senior Indian I.C.S. officer for smoking at a conference. He rebuked him in the presence of about two hundred other officers, both senior and junior to him. This was a quite unforgivable show of intolerance which naturally had much publicity.
     We began to piece together the causes of the Rampur rebellion. Hindus had been in no way involved and were, if anything, sympathetic towards the rebels. The quarrel was solely between the Muslims in the city and the State government itself and it arose because these Muslims objected to a Muslim State joining the Indian Union. They wished to be a part of Pakistan. Oddly enough, even the Hindus seemed to favour this choice. In the villages all remained quiet. Probably, those who stirred the people to violence were a few agitators who had a spite against the Chief Minister. They seized the opportunity of the Riza fast when tempers were easily frayed and when spiritual benefits would accrue to those who were killed, to set the mob ablaze on the pretext that the State had been false to its people by joining the Indian Union. {465} The students, of course, were to the fore in the later stages of rioting.
     The Rampur police were quite useless owing to their fear of reprisals and because many of them had relatives among the rebels.
     By the 10th August violence had died away.
     All over the hitherto disturbed areas of Muttra and Agra, confidence was returning so long as the soldiers were out on the countryside, touring villages and hamlets and were to be seen on patrol by townsman and peasant.
Around Meerut, sporadic disturbances continued. Near Bulandshahr on the 17th August some Muslim butchers and bangle-sellers coming from market and some peasants in the fields near by at Sarai Chhabila were mercilessly slaughtered by Hindus of local villages. The police could find only one seriously wounded man: the rest had been burnt and only a bone or two were found in the water close by. One of our pensioners died here, leaving a widow, two sons and a married daughter whom he had been visiting.
     But all this was childâs play to the terrors of the Mewat, Bharatpur, Alwar and the East Punjab.
     On the 29th August the Commander of the United Provinces Area received a very welcome commendation for his officers and men from the Premier, Pandit Pant.
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I shall be glad if you kindly convey to the troops under your command a message on my behalf thanking them for the cheerful and devoted manner in which they have in these difficult times invariably come out to help in the maintenance of law and order in this province. I greatly appreciate the excellent work done by all ranks and officers, particularly so soon after their return from active service.
     At the same time the Pandit spoke strongly of his determination to keep the peace.
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We will take the sternest measures to keep the peace, and we will not tolerate any act that interferes with the maintaining of law and order. It is our determination that, whatever happens anywhere, there will be peace in the U.P. We are alive to our responsibilities to 60 million people. {466}
* * * * *
     In the Army we were trying to get our Muslim soldiers away to Pakistan. Day by day, especially in Training Centres, Record Offices and small units, the Punjab atrocities were rubbing Muslims against Hindus and making for bad blood. We watched the rising hatred with much care, patching holes here and there to keep it from bursting through the now weakened texture of our Armyâs discipline.
     In bigger combatant units, feeling was not too bad, far better than it was to be by October when we had to segregate our Muslims from the rest. The 3rd Rajputana Rifles said that orders to despatch their Muslims to Pakistan were received amongst their Hindus with very genuine regret, the Hindus of the Headquarters Company asking for permission to give a farewell party to their Muslims, an example copied by all other Companies. At Delhi, amid emotions of genuine comradeship, Hindu officers gave a great farewell party to their Muslim brethren. It was so, too, at Eastern Command Headquarters. It could not have happened so pleasurably two months, perhaps even a month, later. One only hopes most fervently that circumstances may arise one day not so far distant that will bring these former comrades together again in friendship and confidence.
     On the other hand we had instances of Hindu detachments leaving Pakistan by train shouting, âDown with Pakistan!â âDown with Jinnah!â at each station they passed and even letting off their rifles at random. From Hindustan more than one troop train bore Muslim soldiers shouting similar taunts and provocations.
     As the sorting out of our soldiers went on it became apparent that before long units in which the communities had hitherto been proportionately mixed would soon be heavily overweighted with Sikhs. Apart from the possibility of trouble with so many of these warriors together in one unit, there was quite a chance of trouble among the Sikhs themselves. Although supposedly a casteless society, the landowner Jat Sikh looks down on the landless Labana and others of the poorer sort. This is a problem that India will face later.
     With the transfer of Muslims had gone our Grand Old Man, Brigadier Mahomed Akbar Khan of Meerut Sub-Area, who was now to be a Major-General in command of the Sind Area at Karachi. {468}
     Our Army was crumbling away, and as it crumbled, the posters went up in Delhiâs Connaught Circus. âBritish OfficersâSack the Lot.â Yet Indians asked me why so few of our officers were staying on with their army.
     By September we had come to know the new Indian Governors.
     Assamâs Governor, Sir Akbar Hydari, I.C.S., Nationalist Muslim, friend of Pandit Nehru, humorous and quick of wit, we have already noticed in Shillong.
     Mrs. Sarojini Naidu, who was to be a temporary governor of the United Provinces, and finally stayed permanently, was small, sparrow-like, witty, urbane and of great humanity. She had no illusions about the streak of cruelty that is in all too many Indians and which made a shambles of Calcutta, Bihar and the Punjab. âLabyrinthitisâ was her term for all those who had newly acquired power and did not know which way to, turn, which course to steer. She was a lady of considerable charm, even at her ageâand she would not mind a reference to that age either!
     âC. R.â, Mr. Rajagopalachari, for Bengal, is a scholar, a man of liberal outlook, who gives one the impression of being both a strong man and a good one. Though he dresses in Indian homespun cotton, he is a man of the worldâof the Western world, perhaps. He, too, is full of a kindly wit.
     Mr. Jairam Daulat Ram, Governor of Bihar, was dapper, serious, able, determined to the point of ruthlessness, perhaps Anglophobe, and was popular in his new province of Bihar.
     To Orissa I never penetrated after the 15th August when its former Governor left. The province was not turbulent so my footsteps, or wings, never led me thither. I was too much occupied in Bengal and in the north.
     All except Sir Akbar Hydari seem to have kept a teetotal household, no matter what their guests were used to drink in the evening or what they wished to drink. This did not add to the feeling of hospitality and it made a Western guest feel a little as though he were not welcome for he knew that when he himself bade an Indian guest to his house he was at pains to discover what food and what drink his guest would prefer in order that he might welcome him.
August went out with both Dominion Governments to some extent installed; both Army Headquarters partly {469} organised but functioning; Supreme Headquarters in office but obviously with its wings so clipped by Indian Army Headquarters that before long it would not be able to leave the ground; the Army in confusion as it sought to reorganise itself; Gurgaon and the nearby States still in a state of panic and devastation with tens of thousands of Muslim refugees outside the States; Bengal at long last quiet and the United Provinces smouldering from its last outbreak with sparks awaiting a breath to blow them into murderous life.
     Finally, the students were being rebuked by Mahatma Gandhi.
     The Mahatma attended the annual meeting of the University Studentsâ Union in the compound of Science College, Calcutta, and there held a prayer meeting.
     As Mr. Gandhi, accompanied by Mr. Suhrawardy and other members of his party, arrived, some students displaying posters demonstrated against the former Chief Minister of Bengal. Apart from this the meeting passed off without occurrence.
     Later Mr. Gandhi, in his post-prayer speech, reprimanded the demonstrators for their behaviour and said that, by insulting Mr. Suhrawardy, they had insulted himself. Addressing the students, Gandhi said that everywhere there appeared to be anarchy in the student world. They did not give obedience to their teachers and to their vice-chancellor. On the contrary, they actually expected obedience from their teachers. It was a painful exhibition on the part of those who were to be future leaders of the nation. They had given an exhibition of unruliness that evening. He was faced with placards in a foreign tongue referring to Mr. Suhrawardy in unbecoming language.
     A student must be under the strictest discipline. He could not marry or indulge in dissipation. He must not indulge in drink and the like. His behaviour must be a pattern of exemplary self-restraint. Had they all lived up to that pattern they would not have done what they did at the prayer meeting.
     On the 10th September, Brigadier D. Barker, commanding Meerut Sub?Area, went to Delhi to try and find out what really was happening, and to contact Colonel Proud, Sub?Area Commander. On the way in he stopped at Shahdara. {470} There he found a riot just finishing, the crowds flocking hither and thither and standing about in the narrow streets. Police were loafing round doing nothing. He went on to the police station and found a Sikh Magistrate and Muslim Sub-Inspector doing the same. They had no ideas and no morale. Shortly afterwards some men of the Madras Regiment arrived and started to patrol the streets. The crowds slipped out of the way. Delhi was like a deserted city, but even that was an improvement on its recent past.
     He then went out to Kotana on the 13th September. This was where a small police detachment prevented Muslim refugees from being pursued across the ford. They made a good showing. When the wretched Muslim refugees had crossed, the police fired on the pursuers, who shouted âWhy stop us? These are our Shikar (prey)!â They returned heavy fire at the police and tried to cross, taking cover behind bullock carts. Broken carts could still be seen sticking out of the water. With a confidence found anew from the example and support of our soldiers, the small police picket at Kotana had fought a stubborn and brave action through many hours.
     Looking west over the river from Kotana he could see no sign of life, only vultures circling, and one burning village. The Collector held a meeting and afterwards asked the Brigadier to present the monetary awards, a ceremony designed to boost police morale.
     We have before noticed the considerable influx of refugees, mainly Sikh, into Dehra Doon. On the 14th September we saw the result.
     The 2nd Gurkhas were celebrating Delhi Day, the anniversary of their great fight on the Ridge at Delhi in 1857, when a taxi-driver arrived at the Commandantâs house, shaking like a leaf. He said that a bomb had exploded in the bazaar and that âsab logâ (all people) âwere runningâ. The Commandant called out the mobile column of the 6th Gurkhas, and some officers of the 2nd jumped into a jeep and made for the town. There they found that the police had acted quickly, and that Mr. Hunt, the Superintendent of Police, was enforcing a curfew. The town was clearing when the soldiers arrived in their lorries and spread out through the streets driving the inhabitants indoors. The Hindus were undoubtedly the aggressors. There had been a Hindu procession and, it was {471} claimed, someone from near a mosque threw a bomb, later diminishing into a brick, then into a stone, and the Hindus retaliated. That was the story. The facts lay about the streets in the shape of dead Muslims, fires smouldering at the wooden doors of little shops, gutted and looted houses, the usual nauseating debris of Indian communal riot, with a monsoon drizzle diluting the blood in the streets and washing it into the gutters. We saw one non-Muslim corpse, a little Sikh girl. The often-experienced crop of rumours came surging in, always of impending atrocities, assaults, burnings to be instigated by the cowed, suffering minority against the savage majority-rumours broadcast by this same politico-religious body. Unfortunately, the local administration was communal and regarded the extirpation of Muslims as inevitable and, since inevitable, therefore not to be unduly halted. The United Provinces ministry cleaned out this Augean stable with commendable promptitude.
     In 1922 there had been a small riot of this nature in Dehra Doon, a very small one. Here today was one that cost in a twinkling over a hundred dead and injured. The soldiers stayed in the town for a few days. Other columns of Gurkhas wove out among the little villages to stop Sikhs and Hindus who were now murdering wherever they could find a few defenceless Muslimsâmen, women or children. Hatred and violence even spread to the tiny hill village of Chakrata, 6,000 feet up in the monsoon clouds.
     A flight over the eastern Doon towards the Ganges revealed Jawalapur near Hardwar, a third gutted with fire, and five miles to the south of it a Muslim village lying between two Hindu villages, a blackened, lifeless desert with vultures afloat above. By now our Sappers and Miners from Roorkee were in charge of this area and all was quiet.
The Army was now being used in Hindustan as a communal weapon. Too often it only reached the scene in time to prevent the luckless minority from revenging itself on the triumphant majority.
     On the 19th September a patrol of seven men of the 1st Kumaon Regiment, under a Hindu officer, was out in the Bulandshahr district after a report of impending trouble. It passed through Pinauti where all was quiet. Later it saw smoke, so turned back to the village. There at 7 p.m. it found {472} the village alight and a heaving mob of between 3,000 and 4,000 Hindus around the village, directed by a leader on an elephant. As the patrol came on, shouting to the mob to go, some of the rioters advanced on it. The patrol opened fire and, as the mob persisted, got down to the business with its automatics. The crowd drew back but, despite losses, came on again and the patrol opened fire again. The action went on for an hour, when the mob dispersed, dragging their casualties away with them into the crops.
The patrol then ran into the village, where it released some two hundred Muslims, mostly women and children, from a blazing house into which they had been locked. Our men stayed close by that night, sending in for reinforcements which arrived before daylight.
     Only one villager had been hurt, a woman who was killed in the fields. So, here at least, we were on the spot in time. Another patrol scoured the neighbouring villages and evacuated seven hundred Muslims to Rajghat for Aligarh.
At least one hundred of the raiders were killed, so we know that they suffered heavy casualties. It was for our men a commendable affair.
     Two nights before, another patrol of the same regiment went out to save another Muslim village but was intentionally misdirected by a venal village tehsildar (village official) and never reached its objective. Over 150 Muslims died as a result.
     At Agra we found the Kumaon Regimental Centre rather perturbed because one of their patrols from the 1st Battalion had come upon a riotous band of Hindus, had opened up at once on them and knocked out about fifty. These proved to be Ahirs from the very villages where the Kumaon Regiment takes its men. There were murmurings among the men. The Subadar Major of the Centre was a sensible soldier and only needed reasons to support the soldierly action of the 1st Battalion patrol. We supplied them with the remark that only a first?class regiment could bring itself to so impartial an action, and with the story of Henry IV directing the judge to punish the future Henry V, his own flesh and blood. All was well.
     At Agra, too, we learnt that the Hindus and Sikhs of a Workshop Company were threatening the Muslim minority in the unit. There was talk of âThe Dayâ, so we removed {473} the Muslims and attached them to a Muslim Transporter Company in the same station to await in security their transfer to Pakistan.
     I give these two instances to show what sort of perplexities were presented day by day to our regimental officers all over the Command. These domestic anxieties, together with the sight of wounded fugitives coming in untended on trains from Bharatpur, and the stories told by the ever?flowing stream of refugees from this and other States close by and from the Punjab, kept commanding officers for ever alert and expectant.
     News from nearby Gwalior State was not reassuring. That Darbar had flirted with the highly dangerous Mahasabha in the past: now it was acceding to a Congress government. As a result, there were stabbings in the streets.
All over the northern and western United Provinces there were by now incidents in the villagesâMuslims being thrown from carriages by Sikh and Hindu passengers; big and small raids on unescorted trains; police firing on looters at Farah near Muttra; panic on the Bharatpur border; rioting at Moradabad; Amroha, Bareilly, Rohilkand, all on the very verge of disaster; Dehra Doon, Saharanpur and the Hardwar area in the grip of rioting; civil authorities shouting for more and more troops.
     Dehra Doon blazed up again on the 22nd September and had to be heavily suppressed by Gurkhas. The trouble spread to outlying districts with many casualties. Sappers were in action against a Muslim mob of close on a thousand near Jawalpur, killing a score of them. Even the peaceful hill station of Missouri had its killing.Â
     We were overstretched, had done all we could to help the Punjab. From Eastern Command at Ranchi we sent our last two battalions to General Curtis. Now that things were a little better in the Punjab, we looked to our own concerns, found them thoroughly bad and urged that Delhi return our men from the Punjab and take firm military action in Bharat pur State. Bit by bit, and not before they were vitally necessary, our men came back to us, the 2nd and 4th Rajputana Rifles and the 6th Jats as a beginning. It was touch and go during September whether we could shore up the tottering walls of the United Provinces against the heavy seas that were battering it from the Punjab. With a less resolute and energetic {474} commander in the United Provinces and less experienced subordinates under him we should without doubt have failed. We were there threatened by a widespread rising of Sikhs and Jats.
     On the night of the 24th September General Curtis played our last card. We had not another man to put in to hold the wall and all was going against us except one thingâby now the police were showing signs of recovery.
At a meeting with the ministry that night he told them that the Army Commander intended to institute martial law forthwith in the northern areas of the province. If we did this then the whole world would know that the United Provinces government could no longer govern; suspicion would become knowledge of what had for weeks been a fact. If we could apply it there, then we could apply it everywhere in the province. He knew only too well that neither he nor I could find the officers to administer martial law in even so restricted an area. But, who else was to know? The response was to ask him what added powers came to us through martial law. He told them the conditions that he must insist upon and pointed out that under martial law all the odium of stern measures would fall on him rather than on them who were possibly less well placed to bear it. But they preferred the odium of imposing severe measures to that of succumbing to martial law. So they banned the carrying by Sikhs of kirpans longer than nine inches, gave the widest powers to Commissioners, agreed to segregate Sikh refugees in the areas about Dehra Doon into two places, Premnagar and Chakrata, and there to disarm them, to segregate Hindu and Muslim refugeesâthe latter to Saharanpur for better protectionâput a considerable part of their police force under the direct control of General Curtis, and took other useful measures. This forceful action was worth many battalions to us.
     General Curtis, who had served with Sikhs all his career, issued a note on the carrying of kirpans: the note was sent to Army Headquarters, to the United Provinces government and to all our Areas. He pointed out that there were now large numbers of refugees in the province and their numbers were likely to be further increased. Amongst these were many Sikhs, of whom a large proportion were armed with talwars, curved swords), which they called kirpans, slung across the {475} body, and in addition they carried a sword. They thus had an advantage over every other community. Up to the end of the first world war, all Sikhs used to wear a miniature kirpan attached to the comb in their hair. As a reward for services in that war, they were authorised to wear kirpans, the length of which was restricted to, I think, ten inches. On return from overseas, kirpans were provided under regimental arrangements for every man in the battalion to which Curtis then belonged. Orders were issued for these to be carried at all times. After a month, the Sikh officers asked for the order to be rescinded. This was agreed to, and all ranks reverted to the practice of wearing a miniature kirpan attached to the comb. There would seem to be no religious justification whatever for the present practice of carrying swords, which gave them this advantage over other communities, and the mere possession of which was likely to lead to incidents when passions were aroused.
     Wherever one went in the province one met Indians who said that they had heard that we were coming back to take charge or that we were not going at allâwishful thinking born of their agony.Â
     Here, also, the students could not keep silent while great doings were about them. Mr. R. K. Bhatnagar, Convener of the United Provinces Studentsâ Congress Council of Action, announced that a section of the Press had begun to believe the U.P.S.C. to be in action earlier than their âdirect actionâ was timed to start. So far the Council of Action had given neither the call for a no-fee campaign nor for a general strike. Its notice to the United Provinces government was to expire on the 24th September. Instructions for the struggle would be issued to units after that and then alone would students act. They should, in the meanwhile, remain completely peaceful and disciplined. An emergency meeting of the Council of Action was to be held on the 22nd September to decide the method of the struggle to be launched against the government. One representative from each district had been invited and he must make it a point to attend the meeting.
     The Working Committee of the United Provinces Studentsâ Federation issued notices for a meeting in Lucknow on the 23rd and 24th September to finalise the steps to be taken against the recent enhancement of tuition fees in the light of {476} the latest press note of the Minister for Education and the decisions of the United Provinces Studentsâ Congress.
     Later in September we had some success in unravelling the political tangle in Calcutta which had made a small event on the 1st September into an historical one. Provocative leaflets, broadcast doubtless by this same Mahasabha and perhaps by the Forward Bloc,[1] showing Hindu girls being paraded before Punjab Muslims, were found by us in the last days of August on the streets of the town. The pirate radio broadcaster had also been at work egging Hindus on to avenge the cruelties of the West Punjab. Then came a clash with Sikhs and Hindus against Muslims. Then the affair of the boy at the cinema came as a God-sent opportunity to turn peace into strife.
     A very occasional red shirt denoted the formation of the Communist Red Guard. It was of little significance at this time, but may be more important to India in the years to come.
     Here and there we heard of molestation of European women by Sikhs. Otherwise, Calcutta was again quiet though filthy.
     In Bengal was proceeding a great switch of official and industrial employees between the Muslim and Hindu dominions. Wherever these unfortunates tried to sell up their property the opposite community so boycotted the sale that they bought it for little or nothing. In Hindu West Bengal there was slowly starting a privately expressed disappointment with the results of independence. It had been expected that dawn would break at once and that the government would forthwith embark upon constructive projects, agricultural, medical, domestic. Others hoped for greater persecution of Muslims. None felt satisfied.
     In Muslim East Bengal there was a general restriction of exports of articles of food for Assam or West Bengal. The export of jute was closed down. Hindu professional men were boycotted.
     Thousands of famished men, women and children, dressed in rags, were to be seen loitering in the streets of Chittagong day and night, begging for food and alms, a reminder of the pitiful scenes of 1943.
     Reports of deaths from starvation were constantly dribbling in from the villages. The general vitality of the people had {477} deteriorated from want of proper nourishment. For one thing, milk had become scarce owing to widespread mortality among cattle. during the recent floods.
     From Assam there was little to reportâonly that the Assamese, Muslim as well as Hindu, were about as provincial-minded a they could be, determined to stop Muslim penetration from East Pakistan, and that the Governor was remarking on âthe very weak state into which the administration has got, and the difficulty of getting orders carried out expeditiously or with efficiencyâ, etc. etc., while Mr. Bardoloi, the Premier, was reported in the very same edition of the Statesman of the 5th October as saying that the administration in Assam was one of the best in India. The Assam government had obviously taken the Governorâs words to heart and improved Assamâs administration to a very high degree of efficiency in a very short time.
     Bihar and Orissa remained at peace, only the Adibassis being at all truculent parading it Ranchi hi and places in Singbhum with spears, bows, arrows and swords, defying the police and shouting slogans for their own independence from the hated and greedy Hindu. One always felt sympathy for these honest little dark men.
     We had our troubles in the Army, mainly the growing hatred and restlessness where Muslim units and parts of units were kept kicking their heels, daily expecting the order to go to Pakistan, daily disappointed. In the Indian Armoured Training Centre at Jhansi were whole squadrons of Sikhs and whole squadrons of Muslims both waiting for despatch to their permanent units; almost sheek by jowl. The Commandant kept very careful tabs on all these difficult people.
     Communal riots in the Punjab were affecting the morale of the troops. They were extremely worried for the safety of their families anti unfortunately the breakdown of communications further aggravated the position. News in the Press was meagre and one-sided (depending on the political, communal party to which the paper belonged). This, coupled with the non-receipt of letters, was the cause of grave anxiety. The divergent views of the two governments through the radio and the Press were not at all conducive to a healthy atmosphere, for the troops were far more communal-minded than ever before. {478}Â
     We had liaison parties up in the Punjab with Brigadier Salomon, commanding the 123rd Brigade that we had lent to that Command. These parties sought out the missing relatives of our men in the Command. Army Headquarters in Delhi was arranging for radio broadcasts to give names and whereabouts of refugees so that our soldiers might at least know that their relatives were bodily safe.
     At the end of August we had sent out circulars1 to our Indian troops to tell them how deeply concerned we were for them in these anxious days, exhorting them to put aside all ideas of revenge and to treat the Muslim soldiers, now leaving them, with kindliness and generosity until they bade them farewell. Mercifully, our exhortations and appeals fell on receptive hearts and we had no communal occurrence to disgrace the honour of our soldiers.
     There was one foul episode. This was in a unit coming from outside into Eastern Command. Some Hindu and Sikh men of a paratroop formation passing from Pakistan into Dehra Doon on transfer, attacked, stabbed and threw Muslims out of the train near Moradabad. A following goods train picked up dead and injured. At Moradabad in the United Provinces the train was suddenly surrounded by the armed police. Some of these savages tried to escape but were prevented. The officer-in-charge did his best to conceal the numbers of his men. However, the armed police did their job like soldiers and the party was brought to book.
     We were lucky. I finally left the Command on the 17th November. By then we had had no bad communal incident among our men and expected none, for we were through that worst time when for weeks there was no movement at all of Pakistan men out of Hindustan. By mid-November, by sea at Bombay and by train through the Punjab, the exchange of men and their families was briskly proceeding.Â
     The responsibility on the shoulders of our V.C.O.s was immense. One of our Subadar Majors told me that he himself was having a twenty-four-hour working day to prevent the battalion from breaking up from communal antagonism. They carried their burden loyally and manfully and behaved with a toleration that the whole of civilian India would do well to mark and imitate.
[1] Mr. Sarat Chandra Boseâs party.
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Chapter 37
More Reports from the Punjab
September
All men love liberty and seem bent on destroying her.
âVoltaire
     One of my officers had cause to tour the Punjab[1] in September. Here are extracts from what he had to say. The Punjab slaughter had been going on for about a month.
Â
10th September. Discussing the situation in East Punjab with â (Police Officer).
     âHe is very worried about the position of the Sikh and Hindu refugees who are now in East Punjab. The East Punjab government appear to be doing little or nothing to rehabilitate these destitutes on the land or in the houses vacated by the Muslims. He has urged the East Punjab government to take immediate steps to set up some machinery to deal with this most urgent problem. While no machinery exists persons are quietly taking possession of properties without authority. Some large Sikh landowners from Montgomery district have come across into East Punjab and have laid claim to large areas of land vacated by Muslims. As he says, this will lead to serious trouble and end in the âHave Notsâ rebelling against the âHavesâ.â
13th September.
     âA reliable British lieutenant-colonel in the Pakistan Army stated that some 250 armed Pathans from the Frontier have drifted into Lahore and the surrounding villages. More have come to Rawalpindi. That a number of armed Pathans from Swat have moved over the hills into the Kashmir Valley, that the motor road from Murree to Srinagar is not safe, and that an arrangement has been made to evacuate Europeans without their kit from Srinagar to Rawalpindi by convoy.â {480}
14th September.
     âThe condition of a trainload of Muslim refugees. [Had it not been for the timely intervention of one of our Hindu battalions, the Royal Garhwal Rifles, the passengers on this train would have been virtually wiped out by Sikhs.]
     âThis train had already been derailed twice before, first 4 miles west of Kapurthala, and again just before reaching Jullundur. This is confirmed by the railway authorities. It is also learnt that these evacuees were searched by police and military in Jullundur and they were refused water to drink. On their arrival in Amritsar their condition was beyond description. There were dead and dying in every rail truck, and their beddings were covered by bile and excreta. The smell was almost unbearable. It is said that approximately 100 women were abducted at the first derailment and several killed. Police reports state that the train arrived in Jullundur 12th September evening with 145 dead, of which 100 had been killed and 45 had died for want of food and water. During the search by the police in Amritsar some 50 to 60 women and children died of thirst, hunger and sunstroke, as no efforts had been made to give these people water, although there was a plentiful supply in the station. No civil medical aid was available. The day was extremely hot, the search lasted from 9 a.m. to 2.30 p.m. and most of the refugees were in open or closed steel goods waggons.
     âCommunal feeling had reached a high level in Amritsar on 13th September after a Hindu Sikh refugee train had arrived from Lahore [Pakistan] and refugees described to the local people that they had been detained at Badamibagh, Shahdara and searched by the police. Also it was said that some of the women were stripped of their clothes, and one woman is supposed to have arrived in Amritsar without clothes.
     âAfter hearing these stories the Sikhs were determined to take revenge and took it. The local police were conspicuous by their absence during the whole of this outrage.
     âThe total number of deaths from all causes for this Muslim refugee train while in Amritsar alone was about 120. Thirty corpses of Muslims from this train were collected by the rail {481} way staff from the vicinity of the railway station yard and platform.
     âSome 50 to 60 bodies were thrown out from the train between 9 a.m. and 2.30 p.m. as the people died during the search on 13th September. [Seen by one of my officers.]
     âTwenty-one corpses were counted by my officers on the 14th September lying around the train at the place of derailment. These died during the night 13/14th September. Only two of these had died as a result of the derailment. The rest, mostly children and old men and women, had died of heat?stroke, thirst and starvation. Some 50 per cent of the evacuees had atta [flour] with them, and started cooking at dawn on 14th September. The main reason for the starvation was that they had been refused water at Jullundur and throughout the journey had not been given an opportunity to cook owing to derailments and attacks by Hindus and Sikhs.â
15th September.
     âAmritsar today resembles an armed camp. Almost every Sikh carries either a spear or a sword. Spears are illegal and the police have been told to confiscate them, but they are either afraid to do so, or have not the desire to do so. The police of Calcutta were bad enough, but the police of East Punjab are utterly and entirely useless. Practically no crime cases have been lodged in the past three months. The administrative collapse of the police and civil organisation of East Punjab is to some extent due to the fact that all records were in Lahore, and most officials and a large percentage of the constables and minor officials have gone to Pakistan. It will take at least a year or two of peace to build up a proper police and civil administration for this province.
     âIn the meantime practically all Muslims, apart from those in evacuee camps, have left their homes in the Amritsar district for Pakistan. There is no necessity for Sikhs to carry swords and spears for their protection. These are being carried for display and swank, and so that they can rapidly collect into armed Jathas for killing off Muslim evacuees. These evacuees are well guarded and âMusalman Ka Shikarâ [hunting Muslims], as it is called, is becoming a dangerous task. {482}Â
     âNow that the looting and killing of Muslims is becoming difficult, some of these armed Sikhs are taking to intimidation of passers?by at the Pul Porain [wooden staircase flybridge near the Railway Station, Amritsar], and at the Rego Bridge also near the Railway Station, and are demanding money from Hindus by threats. This is entirely a police matter and it is up to them to stop it. If they donât, and I donât believe they are capable of doing it, this will spread into general intimidation and lawlessness of the âHave Notsâ against the âHavesâ.
     âThe condition of the railway station is indescribable. Sikh and Hindu evacuees are everywhere, and the front porch and the whole station stinks of human excreta and urine. Masses of flies are carrying infection from the filth all round to the food the evacuees are eating, as they sit in this scene of âDisgrace Aboundingâ.
     âWhen several lakhs further evacuees arrive, which is anticipated during the next few weeks, it is impossible even to picture the condition of this and other evacuee areas.
     âLittle has been done to rehabilitate evacuees, and it is rumoured that rehabilitation officials are making considerable money in the allocation of ex-Muslim property. [Unconfirmed but almost certainly true.]
     âThe problem of rehabilitation of this vast horde of destitutes appears, at any rate at the moment, quite beyond the scope of the East Punjab authorities. The authorities here and in West Pakistan are faced with the greatest evacuee movement in history, and in the case of East Punjab the problem is to be handled by a civil administration that is significant by its incompetence. How long it will take for lawlessness and disease to readjust the economic balance, remains to be seen.
     âSome of the events such as murder, brutality, looting, illtreatment of women and small children in evacuee trains, the results of vicious hatred and communal fury, have outdone even Belsen and other bestialities created by the warped Nazi mind.
     âA British officer who was captured in 1942 by the Japanese and worked on the Siam Railway said, âI thought the Japs knew how to pack a train of P.O.W.s to the limit, but this beats them hollow.â â {483}Â
23rd September.
âAmritsar. Another Muslim refugee train.
     âThis morning, 22nd September â47, it was learnt that two Muslim evacuee trains were standing at Mananwala Railway Station some five miles east of Amritsar waiting to get the all-clear to proceed direct to Lahore. The military here made elaborate arrangements to prevent any incident, but were sadly lacking in numbers of troops owing to other commitments. At about midday the first train went through Amritsar Station without any mishap, but an attempt was made to attack it near Khalsa College about four miles down the line. The attackers were driven off by a military picket consisting of one officer and 15 men that were on duty there.
     âThis made the mob very angry and the military picket had to fire spasmodically to keep the mob from attacking them. âAt about 5 p.m. the second train went through, but the train was halted near Khalsa College as it was found that the lines had been removed by the mob.
     âImmediately the train had halted a Sikh-Hindu Jatha of about 8,000 in number made determined attacks on the train with rifles, Stens, kirpans, spears and other weapons. The military picket, with the help of the escort of 1 B.O., 2 Havildars and 12 I.O.R.s of a Field Regiment (Note: both the picket and escort, except for one officer, were Hindu troops) were able to hold them off, but it was soon found that the picket was running short of ammunition, so they had to withdraw after expending all but one Sten magazine.
     âThis picket withdrew to Khalsa College, where it informed Bde. of the situation and asked for help.
     âA Dogra company of the Baluch Regt. was sent out as soon as possible, but by the time they arrived at the scene of the incident the mob had overpowered the escort, having shot the B.O. and one Havildar, and injured 5 of the others (the lives of the rest of the escort were spared only because they were Hindu troops) and had attacked the evacuees, killing and injuring almost all.
     âThe Dogra company opened fire and dispersed the mob, killing and injuring quite a large number (correct figures unknown, but the casualties from military firing can be considercd as fairly high). {484}Â
     âAbout 1 a.m., 23rd September, the train was brought back to Amritsar Station for the remainder of the night.
     âIt may be noted that the civil authorities here had done absolutely nothing in the way of organising medical aid or giving the few remaining live evacuees any water. I requested one of the Dogra officers to detail some of his men to get water and give it to these people, and I and another officer assisted. I do not think I have ever witnessed such coldbloodedness by any human beings as I witnessed last night from the civil authorities.
     âThe previous incident (see my note dated 14th September â47), which occurred almost at the same place was a minor affair to this. In every carriage without exception the dead and dying were mixed up with the woundedâit was certainly a train of death; the train was also well riddled with bullets, they appeared to be mostly Sten and rifle bullet holes, and all the shutters and windows had been smashed.
     âIt was estimated that there were 2,000-2,500 evacuees on this train, out of which 1,000 or more have been killed, the rest, with the exception of about 100, have been injured; through lack of medical attention another 50 per cent of these will probably die during the next few days.â
From a British Officer
     âThroughout September I was along with âââ and the Railway Police struggling to save life and keep the trains moving in North Rajputana in conditions of the utmost difficulty. We succeeded in getting 5,000 Muslims out of Narnaul, a railside town in Patiala State, where there was a wholesale organised massacre going on. We got 6,000 out of Bharatpur, and had to fight every train through. On the 19th I got a wire telling me to hand over duties at once to C. C. Ajmer. We have the satisfaction of having brought off the biggest police job of our lives.â
The Tale of a Dogra Company (Hindus) on its Journey from Razmak to Lucknow
     âThe Company left Razmak for Bannu on 8th September. The night 8/9th September was spent in the Bannu Rest Camp where there appeared to be no signs of any tension whatsoever. {485}Â
     âOn 9th September we moved to Mari?Indus by road, providing an escort for B.O.s and I.O.R.s detained at Bannu due to a ban imposed on the movement of all military personnel on the Bannu?Mari Indus line. This ban was imposed on account of the fact that a week previously two Sikh I.O.R.s had been killed in the train while proceeding from Mari-Indus to Bannu. Sections of the Bannu-Mari Indus road were patrolled by troops of 2nd Frontier Force Regiment and there was very little movement of local inhabitants seen en route.
     âWe were detained at Mari?Indus as it was not considered safe for us to move beyond Mari?Indus to Lahore via Mianwali due to the seriousness of the trouble then prevalent in the whole of the Mianwali district.
     âOn 11th September we mounted a guard over 650 Hindu refugees who were brought to Mari?Indus for onward despatch to Mianwali where a refugee camp had been established. While at Mari?Indus the non?Muslim shopkeepers in the camp repeatedly requested us to smuggle them away in our train as they considered themselves unsafe in present conditions. This sense of fear was further increased by the arrival in Mari?Indus of the Guides Cavalry (a Pakistan unit) on their way to Dera Ismail Khan, who openly declared that they would one day âcut them up for meatâ.
     âOn 13th September we entrained for Rawalpindi. The train was not a military special and was, until half an hour before its scheduled time of departure, a normal mixed train carrying in the main Muslim I.O.R. leave details from Waziristan Area. At 6.30 p.m. orders were received from H.Q. Waziristan Area that the train would carry us to Rawalpindi. Due to insufficient accommodation all Muslim military personnel were detrained and their accommodation allotted to our Company. It is reasonable to assume that due to the last-minute change in the composition of the train any gangs who might have been bent on mischief were not given enough time to organise themselves, and so no attack was made on the train. We arrived in Rawalpindi on 14th September. We were accommodated in the Rest Camp where there were both Muslims and non?Muslims in transit. There were no signs of any tension and troops moved about freely within the limits of the camp.
     âOn 10th September we left Rawalpindi on a military special {486} for Delhi. We were detailed as escort for the train which carried B.O.s, B.O.R.s, V.C.O.s, I.O.R.s and families. Every station from Rawalpindi to Lahore was patrolled by troops and no one was allowed on to the platforms. From what could be seen from a moving train, it appeared that things were normal. âThe train was detained overnight at Lahore (10th/21st September). The railway station was a mass of human beings, presumably Muslim refugees awaiting onward despatch.
     âOn 21st September the train did not leave Lahore as was intended because a report had been received that a Muslim mob had gathered at Harbanspura and was waiting to attack any train passing that way from Lahore.
âFrom a conversation with a Muslim V.C.O. at Lahore station, it appeared that it was the confirmed opinion of all Muslims that the Sikhs were wholly and solely responsible for the trouble in the Punjab. He declared that not a single Sikh was left in Lahore and it was the intention that not a single Sikh would ever enter Lahore again. He maintained that the Muslims had nothing against the Hindus and he assured us that if the Dogra company wanted to move about either in the station or outside, they were at liberty to do so and they would not be touched by any Muslim. This V.C.O. described in some detail the horrible outrages performed by Sikhs against Muslim women and children. He said the Sikhs were the enemies of the Hindus and the time would come when they would turn on and attack the Hindus. To support this he cited instances in Amritsar where the Sikhs had hauled down the Indian Union flag and hoisted the Sikh flag instead. This was evidently a false statement as all the way from Attari to Amritsar and beyond, the Indian Union flag was seen flying from all railway stations and overhead bridges.
     âOn 22nd September the train left Lahore at 11.30 a.m. At Harbanspura we saw the results of the previous nightâs attack on a refugee trainâdead bodies were lying on the railway track. Locals at Attari informed us that about 1,500 non-Muslims had been killed in the attack on the train and that the Muslims had been working all night to remove the bodies so as to show no trace of the attack. When we passed the place about 30-40 bodies were lying on the track and they were being removed under military supervision. The smell in the area was dreadful. At Attari, the first railway station {487} on the Indian border, the train was given a rousing welcome by the local Sikhs. Food and water were distributed freely amongst all, including the troops. We were looked upon as martyrs who had been imprisoned by the Pakistan Government and had only just been set free. The main topic of conversation was the previous nightâs attack on the refugee train at Harbanspura. The population were infuriated and declared that not a single Muslim refugee train would enter Pakistanâevery one would be attacked and the occupants killed.
     âAt Khasa railway station (about ten miles from Amritsar) the train was again detained owing to the line ahead having been tampered with. The locals openly admitted that they had tampered with the line and that their intention was to stop the up Muslim refugee train and slay every individual in it by way of revenge against the Harbanspura incident. Troops report that at about 5.30 a.m. on 23rd September a body of Sikhs passed the station on their way home with their spears smeared in blood. It was rumoured that every Muslim on that train was killed and that the attack was organised as a minor military operation, with covering fire from L.M.G.s and rifles for those who went in with knives and spears. All that remained in evidence of the attack when we passed through were empty boxes and torn clothing and patches of blood.
     âThe train left Amritsar at 3 p.m. The smell from the dead bodies on the station was unbearable. The bodies were on some back platform and could not be seen.
     âAll along the way from Amritsar for a distance of about ten to fifteen miles numerous groups of Sikhs with spears and swords and knives could be seen converging on a small railway station where a refugee-filled train was standing with no engine. It appears that the engine driver, having come to hear of the impending attack, detached his engine from the train and started off for Amritsar. We actually did pass a lone engine on the up line making for Amritsar. No attack was made on the train while we were in that vicinity as the mob had not then reached the station where the train was standing.
     âBeyond Jullundur there seemed to be no sign of trouble, though up to Ambala thousands of refugees (non-Muslims) were on the stations waiting to board trains.
     âAt Jullundur I spoke to a respectable Sikh gentleman and {488} he said that the Sikhs would now only let a refugee train go through to Pakistan unmolested provided one came from there unmolested. This he said equally applied to road and foot convoys.
     âAt Delhi railway station a man was stabbed on the platform on which our train was standing. The crime was committed in the rear of the platform, an isolated place, where there were neither troops nor civilians. The man who committed the crime evidently made good his escape.
     âThe train remained in Delhi for four hours. Things appeared to be normal. Sikhs with their nine?inch kirpans were very much in evidence on all platforms, especially where incoming trains were expected.
     âThe reaction of the troops to the present situation is one of complete disgust. The plight of the refugees, both Muslims and non-Muslims, aroused their sympathy.
     âThey maintain that both parties are equally responsible for the trouble prevailing in the Punjab. Some of the more educated are asking âWhat price freedom?â â
A Report of his Journey from Montgomery to Meerut by a Sikh Subadar
     âI left Montgomery by the Karachi Mail at 3.30 p.m., 22nd August â47. We arrived at Raiwind Jn. at 7.30 p.m. I had to change there and waited until 1.30 p.m. on the station. At about 10 p.m. some 200 Punjabi Muslims armed with swords attacked the station and looted the Hindus and Sikhs on the station. Some 10 persons were killed. There was a military train guard who fired and dispersed the looters wounding several of them. The guards appeared to be Punjabi Muslims of perhaps the Baluch Regiment.â When the train started I and a Punjabi Muslim Havildar and Hindu Sepoy got into the guardâs van where there were two armed Sepoy guardsâone Hindu and one Punjabi Muslim. As I was a Sikh I kept out of sight while in Pakistan as there was considerable trouble at each station over looting. We arrived at Ferozepore at 3 a.m., 23rd August. The train remained there until midday, when it departed. There was no trouble at Ferozepore. In between Faridkot and Jind States there were {489} large numbers of Sikhs and Hindus at every station. They were checking at each station to see there were no Muslims on board the train. I took the Punjabi Muslim Havildar into my 1st Class compartment and hid him in it. There was a retired Sikh Captain in the carriage with me and he helped to hide the Havildar. The Sikh looters came on many occasions and I assured them that there were no Muslims in the carriage and even had to take oaths to this effect. If I had not shown them my pistol and threatened them, however, I think they would have tried to force their way in on more than one occasion. We arrived safe and sound in Meerut midday, 24th August, after a most harassing journey.â
From One of my Staff Officers
23rd September.
     âThe present situation in both East and West Punjab has considerably improved, the reason being that the Sikhs and Hindus in West Punjab have all left their villages and are being concentrated in evacuee camps. For this reason there are no killings, lootings or burning of villages. The same has happened in regard to the Muslims in East Punjab. The only incidents that occur now are attacks on convoys, caravans and evacuee trains. These are heavily guarded with troops available, and attacks on convoys and evacuee trains are becoming more and more costly to the attackers. I visited Pakistan on two occasions and had long discussions with officers working in this area. There is no doubt whatsoever that the Sikhs of East Punjab are far more vindictive; they take every opportunity of derailing trains and attacking convoys with swords and spears which the civil authorities have not got the guts to confiscate. The attacks that are taking place on Sikh and Hindu convoys in West Punjab are more in the form of a reprisal for attacks taking place on Muslim convoys in East Punjab. If the Sikhs could be made to stop their brutal vindictiveness then the Muslims would probably do the same. Major-General Chimni has a target of a fortnight for the transfer of this enormous population. It is more likely to take six weeks from the date of the writing of this note. before this population can be transferred. If attacks on convoys, caravans and evacuee trains ceased, it would probably be possible to
{490} transfer this population within the specified fortnight. The season for sowing pulses will end about 1st October, the season for sowing wheat will close about 1st November. It is considered that there are approximately 1,500,000 Hindu and Sikh evacuees from West Punjab to be rehabilitated in East Punjab. Of this about 1,000,000 are agriculturists. Newspaper reports from both sides give figures of rehabilitation of personnel-for instance that 25,000 have been rehabilitated on the land. These newspaper reports and this propaganda from the government are gross misrepresentations of facts. Most of these people have rehabilitated themselves by taking up land evacuated by the Muslims in East Punjab. They have no ploughs, they have no cattle and they have no seed. In order that East Punjab should produce crops it will be necessary to supply at least 20,000 ploughs and 1,000,000 ploughing cattle together with the requisite seed by 1st November, and this task is far beyond the scope of any government, let alone the present government in East Punjab. Many of these evacuees will die of disease and others of hunger and starvation during the next year and, as many of them have no clothing, they will die of cold during the winter.
     âThis disaster to the Punjab started with the veneer of politics. It is, of course, directly the result of the words and actions of responsible leaders and still more the irresponsible Press. Politics, leaders and the Press can be held to account for 20 per cent of the responsibility of this crisis, the remaining 80 per cent is entirely due to greed on the part of both communities in East and West Punjab. Muslims in West Punjab saw that by butchering and attacking Sikhs and Hindus who owned property and land, they could drive them out thereby acquiring their land, and exactly the same happened in East Punjab, where Sikhs and Hindus attacked the Muslims, driving them out in order to acquire their land. Both communities are equally to blame and the leaders of both communities and the Press of both communities are also equally to blame. The Punjab has been ruined financially for the next five years. The majority of the industries in West Punjab were owned by Hindus and Sikhs, whereas the Muslims have no knowledge of running these industries and they will be a dead loss until such time as the Muslims gain the necessary knowledge.
     âAs regards casualties on both sides it is impossible to give {491} any exact figure, and no exact figu
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-16-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--> âAs regards casualties on both sides it is impossible to give {491} any exact figure, and no exact figure will ever be given, but from investigations carried out it is fairly safe to say that something in the neighbourhood of 100,000 to 200,000 Muslims have been killed in East Punjab and 100,000 to 200,000 Sikhs and Hindus have been killed in West Punjab. The Muslims of East Punjab were poor except for those living in cities where they were running factories such as the carpet factories of Amritsar and therefore the gain to East Punjab is small from the financial point of view, but the loss to the Hindus and Sikhs who were living in West Punjab is enormous. There is no doubt whatsoever that the police of both East and West Punjab joined in the slaughter and looting of minority communities. There is no authentic case of troops in East Punjab running amok and joining in the slaughter of minorities. In West Punjab on the outbreak of the disturbances certain companies of the Regiment in Sheikupura joined in; the officer in charge is under close arrest pending a court martial, the troops have been confined to barracks and the C.O. has been suspended. This is the only case of the Army taking a communal turn. Reports from several sources are continually being received of the Baluch Regiment firing. Practically every case is false. Typical of this type of information is that the Garhwalis fired while escorting a column of Muslim refugees from Taran Taran. The G.S.O. (1) (Intelligence) was there on the spot. Some 60 Sikh goondas hung around the flank and the rear of the column with swords and spears and repeatedly tried to get in to cut up the marching column. This Hindu battalion fired on these hooligans repeatedly throughout the march which was some 12 miles, the number of refugees somewhere in the vicinity of 70,000 and the column 10 miles long. Frantic messages came up to the civil authorities to the effect that the Garhwal Rifles were firing indiscriminately at all passers-by. Although this is my own Regiment I should like to state that the complete impartiality and complete lack of communal influence in the Royal Garhwal Rifles is astonishing. N.C.O.s and Riflemen when entrusted with the guarding of a convoy have not the slightest hesitation in firing on Sikhs and Hindus at the smallest provocation as soon as they get anywhere near the convoy. During my stay with them I was out on several occasions and witnessed this. {492}Â
     âPolitical leaders of both sides have stressed the necessity for refugees to stay in their own areas and particularly for Muslims to remain in the Indian Dominion. Both sides have guaranteed the security of the minority community. If they could guarantee the security of the minority community why did they not do it during the past month? There is no doubt whatsoever that the Muslims now living in Hindustan have not the slightest confidence in the Hindu government as regards the security of life or property. It is my personal belief that sooner or later every Muslim will have to leave India because they will be forced out by persons who are determined to get their land and property. It is something far beyond the capacity of the civil administration to stop and the quicker the transfer of population takes place and the rehabilitation of the Muslim community, the better. There are a number of officers and men now serving in the Indian Army who have volunteered to serve the Dominion of India even though they are Muslims. It would be advisable within the next month or two to ask these persons if they wish to reconsider their decisions and give them the opportunity of going to Pakistan if necessary, otherwise one is likely to be nursing a viper in oneâs bosom.
    âThe relation between the Army and the Sikh Jathas is of interest. How long this particular type of relationship will continue is not known. The Indian Army is entrusted with the work of protecting and defending Muslim refugees during their evacuation. The Sikh Jathas are intent on killing as many as they can. As a result the Indian Army is repeatedly firing on Sikh Jathas and will continue to do so. The Sikhs appear to take this as the Army doing their job and seem to bear no resentment whatsoever against either Indian or British officers for carrying out the work they have been instructed to supervise. However, should the feeling of the Sikh Jathas change and an antagonism between the Army carrying out this duty and the Sikhs take place, then the situation will be extremely grave as these Sikh Jathas would then start ambushing and attacking isolated trucks, thereby forcing the Army to use larger numbers of personnel in the escort of small parties.â {493}Â
     On the morning of the 7th September, Delhi, too, blew up with a loud explosion. It seems that it was started by nonMuslim refugees from the West Punjab of whom there were no less than 200,000 in and about Delhi. In Connaught Place in New Delhi, where such a thing had only once before been known, there was hooliganism and looting. Soldiers turned out to reinforce the police and picketed the streets. A drive through Connaught Place soon after the affray showed all Muslim shops burst open, looted and their contents strewn far and wide across the street.
     For weeks afterwards no Muslim servant from the residential quarter of New Delhi could venture out of his masterâs compound to visit the bazaar. It was a reign of terror such as we had only too often experienced in Calcutta.
One of my majors was at Delhi railway station on the 8th September. He had been detailed for regimental duty at Delhi and Meerut. After finishing his duty at Delhi, he arrived at the station at about half-past seven on the morning of the 8th September to catch the train to Meerut. As he was entering the station he saw before him a crowd consisting mainly of Sikhs. On looking more closely he discerned about six Sikhs with large kirpans slashing a Muslim lying on the station platform. They had finished him by the time he had taken it all in, so he went on to the R.T.O.âs office on the platform.
At the R.T.O.âs office he found about a dozen British soldiers, all unarmed, waiting for a train to Deolali; some of them were from the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment. He asked them what was going on and they said the Sikhs (in all about 200-300 on the station) were searching around for Muslims and killing them. Within the next five minutes he himself saw three more Muslims chased and killed by Sikhs. He then asked the R.T.O. if there were any military guard on the station. He answered that there was, but it was not to be seen, so our major walked all round the station looking for them but failed to find any trace of them. However, he did see three more bodies obviously killed by swords. One was a Muslim soldier, probably a follower, judging by the way he was dressed. Then he returned to the R.T.O.âs office and Station Masterâs office to enquire about his train but was told that no trains would leave while the fracas lasted. So he tried {494} to ring G.H.Q. in New Delhi for transport to get the B.O.R.s and himself away from the station, but all the telephones were dead. He went back to the R.T.O.âs office just in time to witness three more murders, the last one committed about four yards from him.
     He had noticed a Sikh in military uniform with a large kirpan leading these last murders. This was obviously the leader, for he was called to do the killing whenever a Muslim was found. After each killing he raised his sword aloft while the Sikhs around cheered. He was helped by others and usually followed by three or four Hindus who stuck spears into the bodies when they were dead.
     After the last killing the officer walked up to this Sikh to learn his unit. He asked the Sikh if he was mad. Even if he had suffered in the Punjab, would he, if bitten by a mad dog, bite it back? He pointed out that his last victim was a very old Muslim who had no chance whatsoever of protecting himself. Although this poor victim had run towards the British soldiers, they could do nothing, being unarmed and completely outnumbered, while some of the Sikhs were carrying revolvers and at least two had rifles.
     The Sikh replied in English smothered with bad language that he had better mind his own business or he would get it as well. By this time the major had taken a good look at the Sikh from close quarters and in his report noted that he had all the appearance of a military officer by his dress and by the way he held himself.
     The Sikh then walked off, but the British officer had marked him well, hoping to find him again when he could lay hands on some armed military. Most of the British soldiers left the station by truck at that time, about 8 a.m., so he went up to the restaurant to get some tea. Near the restaurant he met a Sikh captain who said he was from Bengal and Assam Area H.Q. Both were heading the same way so they decided to go together. At about 9.30 a.m. the two officers went out to look for the Sikh ringleader. By then the military arrived to clear the station for some Airborne troops, about 200 Muslims, who had been waiting outside the station since early morning to get a special train for Pakistan. Under command of an Indian captain, the Hindu troops soon cleared the station very efficiently. Our officer told them what he had seen and then {495} he and the Sikh officer walked about the station looking for the Sikh who had committed these murders, but there was no sign of him and most of the Sikhs had gone.
     There was no further trouble on the station but the Pakistan special was cancelled owing to the tension. The British officer and the Sikh captain left on a train at 12.20 p.m. for Meerut. Nothing further happened except that on the journey they protected a U.P. Muslim police officer and his sister by taking them into their carriage, as the Sikh officer had found out that the Sikh refugees on the train were after them.
     There was butchery on the trains running between Delhi and our United Provinces. On the 7th September a train left Delhi station: it got only as far as Nizamuddin, a mile or two outside, when Sikhs on the train pulled the communication cord. The train stopped and these so-called men got out and systematically butchered every single Muslim on the train. We were hard put to it to find train escorts from the United Provinces area to take trains into Delhi and were lucky not to have a major incident within our borders. General Curtis had, for some weeks previously, by pressing the local government, succeeded in getting armed police guards on to all the trains, and it is probable that the fact that he had for many days been alive to the possibility of this trouble gave him a flying start in train protection. It was between Muttra and Delhi that journeys were the most precarious in our borders. Army Headquarters (India) now introduced the death sentence for anyone in charge of a train or convoy whose charge was attacked and on which casualties were inflicted owing to his failure to act against the attackers. This was a confession of the state to which we were reduced in the Punjab.
    Sikh savagery was appalling. Long after the victim was dead they would slash and slash away at the body, carving it up. They, and many Hindus, were like dogs that had taken to killing sheepâjust an insensate, devilish lust to wallow in the blood of helpless creatures.
     We had now come to the pass where our one and only hitherto reasonably reliable radio station, All?India Radio, was communal. There was nowhere in eastern India, except the Calcutta Statesman, whither we could turn for news.
Notes:
[1] For some reason, the majority of Muslim soldiers were ordinarily reported by observers as being of the Baluch Regiment.
http://sourcebook.fsc.edu/history/tuker.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-17-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One major contribution of this book is to nail the claim to authenticity of different varieties of sources of information, very much including the sacrosanct official records, eyewitness accounts and the memories of the high and mighty who were in charge. The estimates of death toll, it is pointed out, ranges from 2,00,000 to two million. Not one of these is based on any dependable calculation. The eyewitness accounts are often no better than rumours, honed and streamlined through constant repetition. When explored in any depth by an interrogator, the firm surface of the stories splinter and the "truth" looks very different from the received and widely accepted version. General Tuker, writing when his memory served, spoke of the women of Garhmukteswar cheering when their devilish men were busy butchering Muslim women. Historians of Pakistan have invariably cited this authoritative evidence as the basic truth concerning Hindu villainy. Tuker nowhere mentions the source of his information, probably because there was none. He writes that there was no British police officer in U.P. at the time. He forgets that the D.I.G. of police was an Englishman, Robinson. The heroic accounts of Hindus/ Sikhs suffering martyrdom rather than accept conversion and multiple humiliations give way when pushed, to reveal very human failures of courage and anxious efforts to escape, anyway, anyhow. Martyrdom, especially of women, are often imposed against their will or accepted with uncertainty and hesitation.
The construction put upon the violence also varied. Sometimes it is heroic revenge against a community guilty of savagery against one's own in some far away place; Bihar avenging Noakhali, western Punjab avenging Bihar, Garhmukteswar avenging Western Punjab and so on. At other times there is a sense of shame: it is really the responsibility of the other community, or of criminal or bigoted elements in one's own or innocent villagers misled by vicious fanatics. Sometimes it is outsiders who commit the crime, not the residents of one's own village. Sometimes it is the innate perfidy of Hindus or violence built into the Muslim psyche. Most spectacularly, there is the grand colonial perception. It is the monstrous Biharis whom the wise white rulers had expelled from the army after the horrors of 1857. But then one has to explain the Jats, loyal sepoys of the British Indian army. But it is not really that difficult: their natural savagery, kept in control under the iron discipline of British rulers, would break through whenever that discipline slackened. All is explained. One's perception of the past â imperialist, nationalist or communal â determined the interpretation of the violence.
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/lr/2003...30200370800.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-17-2006
An old post I found:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->--- In IndianCivilization@yahoogroups.com, "maruti1920 Though
> a few lakh Meos migrated to Pakistan in the trauma of Partition
when
> they tried to lay siege to Delhi along with Khaksws under Muslim
> League guidance,
VA: Old timers in Delhi give the following description of this event -
in 1947, about 20000 Meos formed an army and tried to invade Delhi
so as to conquer it, slaughter the Hindus and accede Delhi to
Pakistan. Before they could enter Delhi, the Hindu Jats gathered a
larger army from rural Haryana, and there was a pitched battle in
which the Meos were worsted. It may be noted that in 1947, 35% of
Delhi's population was Muslim, and some areas of E Panjab such as
Jallandhar and Ludhiana had as high as 45% Muslim population.
As a punishment, thousands of Meos were forcibly converted to
Hinduism or expelled to Pakistan, but in the following months,
through the intervention of Nehru (and earlier, Gandhi) they were
allowed to reconvert to Islam. Many Meos even returned from Pakistan
to resettle in Gurgaon. It is estimated that in the long run,
approximately 25% of Meos migrated to Pakistan. A drive through the
countryside of Guragon district (and adjoining portions of Faridabad
district) would show the shear Islamic domination, quite unusual in
this part of India otherwise (because the Muslims of adjoining
Bharatpur, Mathura, Agra, Alwar, Bhiwani etc. were either expelled to
Pakistan or had converted to Hinduism in 1900's).
There are conflicting stories of how Meos became Muslims in the first
place. Some say that Balban had forcibly converted Hindus in this
area after numerous Hindu revolts in the area, others credit
Aurangzeb with the forcible conversion. There is even a tradition
amongst some Muslim Meos that they were Atharvavedi Brahmins earlier,
for which reason they used to be called Hussaini Brahmins.
Their relatives, the Khanzaadas of Alwar area were expelled en masse
by Hindu Jats and Rajputs from that area.
The Tabhlighi movement had a stronghold amongst Meos, and
the 'Secularist' Mullahs like Wahiduddin have been very active in
this front.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/IndianCivili...n/message/30876<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Anyone have more info about this Meo attempt at takeover, V.P Bhatia mentioned it one of his other articles in more detail but I can't find the articles now.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 09-17-2006
Are you looking for this article?
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Anyone have more info about this Meo attempt at takeover, V.P Bhatia mentioned it one of his other articles in more detail but I can't find the articles now.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd--><b>The Core Question Of Conversions</b>
<i>Author: V.P. Bhatia
Publication: Organiser
Date: November 10, 2002 </i>
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-17-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Are you looking for this article?<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Mudy thanks for trying but that wasn't the article I was looking for, there was one more by him where he goes into more detail about the Khaksars antics in Delhi where they amassed arms and holed up in a couple of important buildings and kept firing on Hindus months after Partition happened, this was later supressed by Sardar Patel, I was thinking that a lot of these Meos were part of the Khaksars.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 09-17-2006
Here is Bharatvarsh, <!--emo&
--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/smile.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='smile.gif' /><!--endemo--> <b>Nehru's Verbal Fascination with the Sword</b>
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->The incident has two lessons. One is Pt Nehru's verbal fascination for war which never materialised despite Pakistan's complete ethnic cleaning of Hindus and Sikhs. Secondly, Pt Nehru was used not only to charging into crowds but criticising Hindu and Sikh refugees as well as Hindu organisations wildly during those turbulent days. While his cabinet colleague N.V. Gadgil says in his memoirs that the RSS had taken the lead in Punjab in saving and protecting the Hindus, Nehru indulged in its senseless criticism. He was drinking with Mountbatten after the swearing-in function on the midnight of 14-15 August, 1947, when the non-Muslims of Lahore and almost all other places in West Punjab were being butchered in wholesale. In Delhi itself even a month after Independence, pro-Pakistan zealots were on the offensive, waging a regular civil war. Delhi police which had consisted mostly of Muslims was now a depleted force, many Muslims having deserted with arms and joined the anti-Hindu rioters. Dumps of sophisticated arms were found in mosques and other buildings. Pro-Pakistanis were firing on even the armed forces and police to maintain their hold on certain areas. The Irwin Hospital (now Loknayak J.P. Narayan Hospital) was under fire from a building belonging to the Muslim League paper Dawn across the Ramlila Ground. It could be controlled after many hours of counter-firing from the turrets of the hospital as even VIPs' caravans visiting it to see the wounded were fired upon. Dr Sushila Nayar was stranded there for hours together. There was even an attempt at coup by blowing up Parliament. The remnants of the League had in fact collected enough armaments to hold the city as the Pakistani outpost. Four hundred Khaksars had collected in Jama Masjid to capture the city.
Elsewhere in the city, even in September, 1947, a month after Independence, displaced Muslims huddled in the Idgah near Paharganj were in an aggressive mood on the Bakr-Id Day and insisted on taking a sacrificial cow in a procession through New Delhi. They had to be fired upon repeatedly. Some 400 were killed and an equal number injured before the rebellion could be quelled. A building at nearby Faiz Road had to be blown up by Sardar Patel's orders as a non-stop firing went on from there. It was a fierce war on the Hindus who were restrained by Nehru from retaliating or even defending themselves. Even Dr Rajendra Prasad had to protest in a letter to Nehru against use of Army against Hindus under attack in Delhi after sufferings in Pakistan. His speeches were defaming the Hindus, he said.
<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
NIGHTMARE OF NEHRUISM<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->It was not long before I was visited by officers of the Crimes Department, and not only from Delhi. I was accused of causing communal discord, and threatening the peace of the land. I was arrested, and ordered to seek bail. The Station House Officer in Delhi who locked me up for twenty four hours, was mighty pleased with his performance. He boasted loudly that he had prevented a big street riot in Delhi. He invited me to accompany him and see for myself the missiles which the local Muslims had piled up on the roofs of their houses, apart from the firearms inside. When I asked him why he had not got the missiles removed and the firearms flushed out, he snarled, "Address your question to the big bosses of the political parties. I am only a small fry trying to earn my daily bread."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 09-17-2006
Thanks Mudy that was the one I was looking for.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 09-17-2006
Bharatvarash,
use http://ww.kartoo.com search engine for better result according to subject.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 10-07-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Soldiers on the Side lines
Nothing could have prepared the British soldier for the death and suffering he was to witness in India during 1946 and 47. The riots in Calcutta in 1946 were stamped out by British and Indian troops but the rioting then spread to other cities. During the Calcutta riots, the main offenders were the Sikhs, who were aided by members of the local criminal fraternity, towards the Muslims. They killed and looted until the British Army came on the streets to restore order. In September Bombay went up in flames. By March 1947, when Rawalpindi also went up in flames, the death toll from communal rioting ran into tens of thousands. This rioting was not anti-British or anti-Government, but between Hindus and Sikhs on the one side and Muslims the other. By the time independence came in 1947 the rioting, death and destruction had reached its peak and the British soldier could only stand on the sidelines and witness the suffering of both Muslims and Hindus.
The Indian Army was the heart and soul of the old Indian Empire and now it had to be divided between the two national armies. Depots, tanks, guns, fuel, ammunition, forms and typewriters, uniforms, the regimental silver, sporting trophies- everything had to go. It says a great deal for the discipline of the old Indian Army and the goodwill that existed between the regiments, that this difficult and often emotional task, was carried out swiftly and with little fuss. Eventually the men and regiments had to be divided. The main division was fairly simple-Sikhs and Hindus to India, Muslim troops to Pakistan, but many regiments contained a mixture of religions and the situation was more complicated. Above all there was the question of what to do with the Gurkhas .
At this time Britain had her eyes on the famous fighting men from Nepal. There were 27 Gurkha Battalion's in the Indian Army, all of which the Indians wanted to retain, but eight battalions of Gurkhas, the 2nd, 6th, 7th and 10th Gurkha Rifles were transferred from the Indian to the British Army and all but one were shipped to Malaya . The other Gurkha battalions were transferred to the Indian Army where they remain today and still flourish. For some of the British Gurkha officers, the thought of being separated from their beloved Gurkhas was too much and many tears were shed before the British left India.
As a result of the partition, millions of people, Muslims and Hindus were forced to leave their homes. It is estimated that about five and a half million people were traveling in each direction. Muslims heading north to Pakistan , Hindus were heading south to the new India. Within days of the announcement of partition the Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus were attacking each other's refugee columns and trains, and massacring their former fellow citizens by the tens of thousands. The massacres were at their worst in the Punjab where trains were sent across the border into India filled with dead bodies. The carriages were marked " A present from Pakistan" and a train carrying dead Muslims in the other direction to Pakistan, was marked " Presents to Pakistan ". While this was going on , the British Army, with no role left to play and forbidden to interfere, stood by and watched the bitter fruits of independence.
Estimates vary but it is thought that about 2 million people lost their lives in the immediate aftermath of independence, especially during the migrations from India and Pakistan . One British officer of the 9th Gurkhas remembers having to rush his company to try and stop a huge massacre on a train in the Punjab. They arrived too late and found nothing but the mutilated corpses of men, women and children. Placing rocks on the line had halted a trainload of people, about 2000 in all. Then a horde of Sikhs, hiding in the nearby fields, had swarmed on to the train and slaughtered everyone on board.
In Lucknow, on the evening before independence, as soon as it got dark, a small party of British soldiers went quietly to the ruins of the British Residency in Lucknow, the place held by a small British garrison against all odds during the Indian mutiny 90 years before. To commemorate the famous stand, the ruined Residency was the one place in the British Empire where the Union Jack flew day and night and was not pulled down at sunset. Now that the Raj was over the British flag finally had to come down, but they would do this themselves. The flag was lowered but that was still not enough. The flagpole was dismantled and sawn off close to the ground and the hollow where it had stood for nearly 100 years was filled in with concrete. Next morning, Independence Day, a jubilant crowd of Indians arrived to haul down the Union Jack, but they found that it had already gone and all traces of where it had once flown completely vanished.
http://www.britains-smallwars.com/India/Sidelines.html<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 11-04-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>The soldier who won India's first Param Vir Chakra</b>
Claude Arpi
November 03, 2006
 Â
Lately many pleas have been made that Mohammed Afzal Guru's execution should be stayed because his death 'could fuel separatism in Jammu & Kashmir.'
The state chief minister himself has been an ardent advocate for clemency for the terrorist who attacked the Indian Parliament in December 2001 (and nearly provoked a war between India and Pakistan).
The 'secular' protagonists claim that his execution will make a martyr of Afzal. I will not enter into these fallacious arguments, but the time has perhaps come to remember a true martyr: Major Somnath Sharma who on November 3, 1947 saved Srinagar airport (and Kashmir) at the supreme cost of his life.
Had he not sacrificed his life, Afzal's defenders would not today make front page news in the Indian press, for the simple reason that they would be Pakistani citizens living under a military dictatorship.
Our story starts during in the early days of October 1947 when Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru received a message from a former deputy commissioner of Dera Ismail Khan [one of the province's main districts] in the North West Frontier Province.
The bureaucrat warned of 'a scheme to send armed tribals from Pakistan to the Pakistan-Kashmir border; some of them had already moved towards the area in transport provided by the Pakistan government. Arms confiscated from non-Muslims had been supplied to these tribals.'
As Maharaja Hari Singh of Kashmir was reluctant to sign the Instrument of Accession to India, Nehru refused to take any action. Two weeks later a large contingent of Afridis, Mahsuds, Wazirs, Swathis and regular soldiers of the Pakistan army 'in mufti' began to enter Kashmir.
During the night of October 22, the 'raiders' burnt the town of Muzaffarabad. They then overran Uri and captured Mahura, the electric power station, fifty miles from Srinagar. The city of Srinagar was plunged in darkness.
In these dramatic circumstances, V P Menon, Sardar Patel's faithful collaborator, went to Jammu and got Hari Singh's signature on the printed Accession Form. He rushed back for the historic meeting in Delhi with India's governor general, Lord Mountbatten in the chair.
A young army colonel named Sam Manekshaw, who attended the meeting, recalled: 'As usual Nehru talked about the United Nations, Russia, Africa, God Almighty, everybody, until Sardar Patel lost his temper. He said, 'Jawaharlal, do you want Kashmir, or do you want to give it away?' He [Nehru] said, 'Of course, I want Kashmir.' Then he [Patel] said: 'Please give your orders.'
Everything then moved very fast. Early the next morning, the first troops and equipment were airlifted from Palam airport [in Delhi] to Srinagar. A young major was sent on his first assignment to Kashmir. He was responsible for the logistic. His name was S K Sinha (today the governor of Jammu and Kashmir).
He later wrote about the first Indian jawans reaching Srinagar: 'It was indeed inspiring to see grim determination writ large on their faces. They were all determined to do their best, no matter what handicap they had to contend with. I had never before seen such enthusiasm and fervour for duty.'
They knew that all eyes in India were focused on them. At Srinagar airfield, just before returning to Delhi, Sinha met an old friend, Major Somnath Sharma of 4 Kumaon. He had come a day earlier from Delhi with a broken arm.
Sinha found him 'rather disgusted with life.' With his 'wretched hand in plaster,' no one would give him 'an active assignment in Delhi.'
His company had now been posted to Kashmir, but he was looking to be relieved soon from his present job and given 'something really active.' His company's duty was 'only' to protect the airport.
Sinha tried to impress on Somnath 'the vital importance of the airfield to us and in that context the importance of the task assigned to him,' but says the governor this 'sermonising could do little to fulfill his desire for being sent further forward.'
After spending an hour discussing and sipping a mug of tea reclining on his kitbag, Sinha left for Delhi. 'Little did I then know that within the next forty-eight hours, he was to die a hero's death and earn great renown, fighting most gallantly in very close proximity to where we then lay talking so leisurely.'
But let us spend a moment on Somnath Sharma's life.
He was born as the eldest son of an army family. His father General A N Sharma, who retired as the first director general of the Armed Medical Services after Independence, was often in non-family postings.
Som, as his friends and family called him, used to spend time with his maternal grandfather Pandit Daulat Ram in Srinagar. His favourite pastime was listening to his grandfather's on the Bhagavad Gita. This influence of Krishna's teachings to Arjun were to remain with Somnath till his last breath.
At the age of 10, Som enrolled at the Prince of Wales Royal Military College in Dehra Dun and later joined the Royal Indian Military Academy. As a young lieutenant, he chose to join the 8/19 Hyderabad Infantry Regiment.
His maternal uncle Captain Krishna Dutt Vasudeva who belonged to this regiment had died defending a bridge on the River Slim in Malaya against the Japanese. His bravery had made it possible for hundreds of his jawans to cross over to safety. The example of his uncle greatly influenced him during his career.
Somnath fought in World War II under Colonel K S Thimmayya (later the army chief) in Burma with the British Army. An anecdote speaks tellingly about the character of the young officer.
One day, Sharma's orderly Bahadur was badly wounded in action and was unable to return to the camp. Sharma lifted Bahadur on his shoulders and began walking. When Thimmayya found his officer lagging behind under the weight of his orderly, he ordered him -- 'Leave this man, Som and rush back to the camp.'
Somnath retorted, 'Sir, it is my own orderly that I am carrying; he is badly wounded and bleeding, l will not leave him behind.' He eventually managed to carry Bahadur back, saving his life. He was awarded a 'Mention in Dispatch' for this act of bravery.
After the Japanese surrender in Kuala Lumpur in September 1945, Somnath returned from Malaya via Calcutta. Before landing, a small incident occurred when the British Military Police came aboard to check for contraband.
Som had an unauthorised pistol unofficially presented to him by some Japanese officer in addition to a Samurai sword (officially allotted to each officer). Somnath refused to lie or invent a story to bluff the British officer, he immediately threw the pistol into the sea through a porthole. Such was his straightforwardness!
Two years later, India became independent, but fell prey to mad communal fighting. With his Kumaonis, Somnath was dispatched to aid the civil administration. From his headquarters at Parliament Street police station, he spent his time extinguishing fires between the two communities -- both well armed.
To complicate the matter, streams of refugees were pouring in wave after wave to the capital. The Kumaon Regiment rose to the occasion, doing their duty honestly and impartially towards both communities. At that time, Somnath was moving around with his broken arm and a plaster from the wrist to the elbow.
When his company was ordered to move to Srinagar, Somnath, though technically 'unfit for active duty in war' insisted that he had to lead his company.
Before leaving for Srinagar, he spent his last night in Delhi with Major K K Tewari, his best friend and Burma companion, at the Queen Victoria Road bachelor Officers' Mess in Delhi.
They chatted late into the night. Somnath remarked at one point that he was going to war again but alone this time (without his friend). Having probably some premonition, he asked for a memento from Tewari who told him that he could take whatever he wanted from the room. Somnath went straight to the cupboard and took his automatic pistol, a German Luger. Quite upset, Tewari had no choice but to honour his promise.
The next morning Somnath Sharma landed in Srinagar (where he met S K Sinha). The situation was fast deteriorating.
Two days later on November 3, the 'raiders' reached Badgam a few miles away from the Srinagar airfield. Brigadier 'Bogey' Sen, the commander in Srinagar, immediately dispatched Sharma and his company to Badgam.
At 2:30 pm, supported by 3-inch and 2-inch mortars, a 700-strong tribal force attacked the Indian jawans. Being outnumbered by 7 to 1, Sharma immediately sent a request to Brigadier Sen for reinforcements.
He knew that if the enemy advanced any further, the airport would be lost and Kashmir would become a province of Pakistan; the airfield was the only lifeline between the Valley and the rest of India.
His last wireless message to the headquarters stated: 'The enemy are only 50 yards from us. We are heavily outnumbered. We are under devastating fire. I shall not withdraw an inch but will fight to the last man and the last round.'
Soon after, Somnath Sharma was killed by a mortar.
Does India respect its fallen heroes?
By the evening, when reinforcement reached Badgam; it was too late. The Kumaonis had suffered over 50 per cent casualties though they had inflicted much heavier losses to the 'raiders' who lost 200 men and the airport and Kashmir.
Major Somnath Sharma was awarded the first Param Vir Chakra, the highest Indian gallantry award (the Indian equivalent of the Victoria Cross).
The citation read: 'Keeping his nerve, he skillfully directed the fire of his section into the ever-advancing enemy. He repeatedly exposed himself to the full fury of enemy fire and laid out cloth airstrips to guide our aircraft onto their targets in full view of the enemy. His leadership, gallantry and tenacious defence were such that his men were inspired to fight the enemy outnumbering them. Major Sharma set an example of courage and qualities seldom equaled in the history of the Indian Army.'
Three days later, Sharma's body was recovered. Though mutilated beyond recognition, a few pages of the Gita that he always kept in his breast pocket and the empty leather holster of Tewari's pistol helped to identify the body. The pistol was gone.
During the last chat with his friend before flying to Kashmir, Somnath had joked that either he would die and win the Victoria Cross or become the army chief. It is his younger brother V N Sharma who in 1988 became chief of army staff.
Today, the world has gone topsy-turvy: true heroes are forgotten and terrorists become martyrs.
http://ia.rediff.com/news/2006/nov/03spec.htm<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 11-25-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Dr.B.R.Ambedkar Analysed The Implications Of Partition
Aug 2006Â
How far does Pakistan approximate to the solution of the communal question ? If the boundaries of Pakistan are to follow the present boundaries of the provinces in the north -west and in Bengal, it certainly does not eradicate the evils which lie at the heart of the communal question. It retains the very elements which give rise to it, namely, the pitting of a minority against a majority. The rule over Hindu minorities by the Muslim majorities and the rule of the Muslim minorities by Hindu majorities are the crying evils of the present situation. This very evil will reproduce itself in Pakistan, if the provinces marked out for it are incorporated into it as they are, i.e. with boundaries drawn as at present.
Besides this, the evil which gives rise to the communal question in its larger intent, will not only persist as it is, but will assume a new malignancy. Under the existing system, the power centered in the communal provinces to do mischief to their hostages is limited by the power which the central government has over the provincial government. At present, the hostages are at least within the pale of a central government which is Hindu in its composition and which has power to interfere for their protection.
But, when Pakistan becomes a Muslim state with full sovereignty over internal and external affairs, it would be free from the control of the central government.The Hindu minorities will have no recourse to an outside authority with overriding powers, to interfere on their behalf and curb this power of mischief, as under the scheme, no such overriding authority is permitted to exist. So, the position of Hindus in Pakistan may easily become similar to the condition of Armenians under the Turks or of Jews in Tsarist Russia or in Nazi Germany. Such a scheme would be intolerable and Hindus may well say that they cannot agree to Pakistan and leave their co-religionists as a helpless prey to the fanaticism of a Muslim national state.
This is a very frank statement of the consequences which will flow from giving effect to the creation of Pakistan. But care must be taken to locate the source of these consequences. Do they flow from the creation of Pakitan, or do they flow from particular boundaries that may be fixed for it? If the evils flow from the creation itself, if they are inherent, it is unnecessary for any Hindu to waste his time in considering it. He will be justified in summarily dismissing it. On the other hand, if the evils are the result of the boundaries, the question of Pakistan reduces itself to a mere question of changing the boundaries.
A study of the question amply supports the view that the evils of Pakistan are not inherent. If any evil results follow, they will have to be attributed to its boundaries. This becomes clear if one studies the distribution of population. The reasons why these evils will be reproduced within western and eastern Pakistan is because, with the present boundaries, they do not become single ethnic states. They remain mixed states, composed of a Muslim majority and a Hindu minority as before. The evils are the evils which are inseparable from a mixed state. If Pakistan is made a single unified ethnic state, the evils will automatically vanish. There will be no question of electorates within Pakistan, because in such a homogeneous Pakistan, there will be no majorities to rule and no minorities to be protected. Similarly, there will be no majority of one community holding in its possession, a minority of an opposing community.
The question, therefore, is one of demarcation of boundaries and reduces itself to: Is it possible for the boundaries of Pakistan to be so fixed, that instead of producing a mixed state composed of majoritiesand minorities, with all the attendent evils, Pakistan will be an ethnic state composed of one homogeneous community, namely Muslims? The answer is that in a large part of the area affected by the project of the League, a homogeneous state can be created by merely shifting the boundaries, and in the rest, homogeneity can be produced by shifting only the population.
Parliament Of India
Some scoff at the idea of shifting and exchange of population. But those who scoff can hardly be aware of the complications, which a minority problem gives rise to, and the attendant failures on almost all the efforts made to protect them. The constitutions of post war states, as well as of older states in Europe which had a minority problem, proceeded on the assumption that constitutional safeguards for minorities should suffice for their protection, and therefore the constitutions of most of the new states with majorities and minorities were studded with long lists of fundamental rights and safeguards to see that they were not violated by the majorities. What has been the experience?
Experience shows that constitutional safeguards did not save the minorities. Experience also showed that even a ruthless war on the minorities did not solve the problem. The states then agreed that the best way to solve the problem is by exchanging alien minorities within its border, with those of its own which were outside its border, with a view to bringing about homogeneous states. This is what happened in Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria. Those who scoff at the idea of transfer of population, will do well to study the history of the minority problem, as it arose between Turkey, Greece and Bulgaria. If they do, they will find that these countries found that the only effective way of solving the minorities problem lay in an exchange of population. The task undertaken by the three countries was by no means a minor operation. It involved the transfer of some 10 millon people from one habitat to another. But undaunted, the three shouldered the task and carried it to a successful end because they felt that the considerations communal peace must outweigh every other consideration.
That the transfer of minorities is the only lasting remedy for communal peace is beyond doubt. If that is so, there is no reason why Hindus and Muslims should keep on trading in safeguards which have proved so unsafe. If small countries, with limited resources like Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria, were capable of such an undertaking, there is no reason to suppose that, what they did, cannot be accomplished by Indians. After all, the population involved is inconsiderable and because some obstacles require to be removed, it would be the height of folly to give up so sure a way to communal peace.
The only way to make Hindustan homogeneous is to arrange for exchange of population. Until that is done, it must be admitted even with the creation of Pakistan, the problem of majority versus minority will remain in Hindustan as before and will continue to produce disharmony in the body politic of Hindustan.
Admitting that Pakistan is not capable of providing a complete solution to the communal problem within Hindustan, does it follow that the Hindus on that account should reject Pakistan?
Consider the effect of Pakistan on the magnitude of the communal problem. That can be best gauged by reference to the Muslim population as it will be grouped within Pakistan and Hindustan.
Figures indicate that the Muslims who will be left in British Hindustan will be only 8,545,465 and the rest 47,897,301 formig a vast majority of the total Muslim population, will be out of it and will be the subjects of Pakistan. This distribution of the Muslim population, in terms of the communal problem, means that while without Pakistan the communal problem in India involves 6.5 crore Muslims, with the creation of Pakistan it will involve only 2 crores. Is this to be of no consideration for Hindus who want communal peace? It seems that if Pakistan does not solve the communal problem within Hindustan, it substantially reduces it, becomes of minor significance and therefore much easier of peaceful solution.
It cannot be disputed that if Pakistan does not wholly solve the communal problem within Hindustan, it frees Hindus from the turbulence because of Muslims being predominant partners. It is for the Hindus to say whether they will reject such a proposal, simply because it does not offer a complete solution. Some gain is better than much harm.
http://www.janasangh.com/jsart.aspx?stid=141<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 12-10-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Textbook case of 2-nation spin </b>
Pioneer.com
Kanchan Gupta | New Delhi
Six decades after India's blood-soaked partition on the basis of the Muslim League's two-nation theory, passionately espoused by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has ordered the revision of textbooks to bring them in conformity with his thesis of "enlightened moderation".
If carried through, the reason for Pakistan's creation - Muslims cannot live with Hindus - and why lakhs of Muslim families, including that of Gen Musharraf, migrated to the League's 'promised land', will be made to stand on its head.
Pakistani media reports suggest that the Education Ministry, headed by Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, has brought about "drastic changes" in the national curriculum for 'Pakistan Studies', which will be incorporated in textbooks beginning 2007. The new curriculum will have to be followed by all provinces.
The changes, aimed at promoting "enlightened moderation" as opposed to Islamisation that formed the basis of the national curriculum till now, will lead to the inclusion of at least three new chapters seeking to halt Pakistan's spiralling descent into radical Islamism.
Apart from dealing with Gen Musharraf's economic privatisation policies and his "vision of enlightened moderation", they will redefine the two-nation theory, remove "hate speech" and remind minorities of Jinnah's August 11, 1947 speech.
Till now, students in Pakistan have been taught, in keeping with historical records, that the two-nation theory that led to their country's creation was based on the League's assertion that Muslims, as a religious community, were culturally, socially and even racially different from Hindus and thus formed a separate nation.
A senior official, quoted in The Daily Times, says the revised textbooks will now define the two-nation theory and Pakistan's ideology "with specific reference to the economic and social deprivation of Muslims in India" by the then British colonial Government.
"An effort has been made to exclude all such material that promotes prejudice against the non-Muslims of pre-partition India. Pakistan's ideology has been explained with reference to the pronouncements of Allama Iqbal and Quaid-e-Azam," the official has been quoted as saying.
Gen Musharraf's spin-masters are obviously trying to make his "enlightened moderation" appear to be an extension of the "enlightened politics" of Iqbal and Jinnah so that the curriculum changes are more palatable for Pakistanis. But history cannot be short-circuited to suit a military ruler's desire to be seen as a reincarnation of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. The Muslim League, formed in Dhaka a hundred years ago to the month, never wavered from its fundamental belief that Muslims of undivided India were "a distinct and separate nation" from the Hindus, which it preached from its separatist platform.
Its demand for separate electorates evolved into the demand for a separate state whose basis, as League documents show, was "neither territorial, racial, linguistic nor ethnic; but based on adherence to Islam".
Allama Iqbal was the first to articulate this demand on December 29, 1930 at the League's 25th session in Allahabad when he thundered, "I would like to see the Punjab, the North-West Frontier Province, Sind and Baluchistan amalgamated into a single state... No Muslim politician should be sensitive to the taunt embodied in that propaganda word 'communalism'. We are seventy millions and far more homogeneous than any other people in India. Indeed, the Muslims of India are the only Indian people who can truly be described as a nation in the modern sense of the word."
Ten years later, the 'Lahore Resolution' was adopted by the League on March 23, 1940, providing the ideological basis for India's partition along communal lines in 1947. At that session, Jinnah had declared,<b> "Mussalmans are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory, and their state."</b>
<b>A year before Jinnah travelled to preside over the destiny of what he described as a "moth-eaten Pakistan", he called for "direct action" on August 16, 1946, to serve an ultimatum on the colonial Government and the Congress which still nourished hopes of avoiding partition. The horrendous slaughter of Hindus on 'Direct Action Day' had nothing to do with Gen Musharraf's definition of two-nation theory based on the "economic and social deprivation of Muslims in India".</b>
Negating history is not easy, no matter how lofty the purpose. Ironically, emir of Jamaat-e-Islami Pakistan Qazi Hussain Ahmed understands this better than Gen Musharraf. Reacting to the change in curriculum, he told newspersons in Lahore,<b> "Those who are saying that Pakistan came into being not because of Hindu-Muslim differences but social and economic deprivation, are in fact negating the Constitution of Pakistan itself."</b>
The emir was referring to the Objective Resolution of 1949 whose text is the Preamble to Pakistan's Constitution. Perhaps, Gen Musharraf could take a second look at the document that legitimises the existence of his country.
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Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 12-10-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-Mudy+Dec 10 2006, 02:38 AM-->QUOTE(Mudy @ Dec 10 2006, 02:38 AM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Textbook case of 2-nation spin </b>
Pioneer.com
Kanchan Gupta | New Delhi
Six decades after India's blood-soaked partition on the basis of the Muslim League's two-nation theory, passionately espoused by Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has ordered the revision of textbooks to bring them in conformity with his thesis of "enlightened moderation".
If carried through, the reason for Pakistan's creation - Muslims cannot live with Hindus - and why lakhs of Muslim families, including that of Gen Musharraf, migrated to the League's 'promised land', will be made to stand on its head.
Pakistani media reports suggest that the Education Ministry, headed by Gen Javed Ashraf Qazi, has brought about "drastic changes" in the national curriculum for 'Pakistan Studies', which will be incorporated in textbooks beginning 2007. The new curriculum will have to be followed by all provinces.
The changes, aimed at promoting "enlightened moderation" as opposed to Islamisation that formed the basis of the national curriculum till now, will lead to the inclusion of at least three new chapters seeking to halt Pakistan's spiralling descent into radical Islamism.
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[right][snapback]61943[/snapback][/right]
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These efforts are useless though. So long there are Islamic theological schools, called madarsas, all these things will remain a big naught.
Just look at what is happening in India. Sachar report is used as a weapon by PM/Sonia etc to say "Muslims should have access to India's resources first". What they do not want to say is that Muslims are below in education because most parents send there kids to Madarsa.
Even the most important madarsa in the world i.e Deoband started teaching english few years back.
A very interesting write up on this madarsa by Edna Fernandes (Forget the name of her book).
-Digvijay
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 12-10-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So long there are Islamic theological schools, called madarsas, all these things will remain a big naught.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not really, as long as Islam has sizeable number of followers things will stay the same, madrasas are just a symptom not the cause.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 12-10-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Dec 10 2006, 09:08 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Dec 10 2006, 09:08 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->So long there are Islamic theological schools, called madarsas, all these things will remain a big naught.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Not really, as long as Islam has sizeable number of followers things will stay the same, madrasas are just a symptom not the cause.
[right][snapback]61972[/snapback][/right]
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They are the cause. Where do you think Taliban got its education at?
-Digvijay
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Bharatvarsh - 12-11-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->They are the cause. Where do you think Taliban got its education at? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Have you read the Quran?
Do you understand what it says?
There is no need for a Muslim to go to a madrasa to turn into a loony, if he reads the Quran and follows everything it says he/she will end up a terrorist, the root cause is Islam not Deoband or the Taliban, all these are byproducts of the ideology known as Islam.
Partition Of India To India/pakistan In 1947 - Guest - 12-11-2006
<!--QuoteBegin-Bharatvarsh+Dec 11 2006, 02:03 PM-->QUOTE(Bharatvarsh @ Dec 11 2006, 02:03 PM)<!--QuoteEBegin--><!--QuoteBegin--><div class='quotetop'>QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->They are the cause. Where do you think Taliban got its education at? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
Have you read the Quran?
Do you understand what it says?
There is no need for a Muslim to go to a madrasa to turn into a loony, if he reads the Quran and follows everything it says he/she will end up a terrorist, the root cause is Islam not Deoband or the Taliban, all these are byproducts of the ideology known as Islam.
[right][snapback]61989[/snapback][/right]
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How many Hindus read Gita on a daily basis? Similarly most impoverished muslims do not read kuran. They go to the mosque and the children are sent to the madarsa. You have to live in India to realise this. So madarsas are the source of all problem.
-Digvijay