<b>Randulla Khan's invasion of the South</b>
Muhammad who succeeded Ibrahim, as the Adil Shahi Sultan was a fanatic Jihadi who wanted to put the Hindus in their place and bring the whole of South India under the cresent banner. Muhammad gathered under his ace commander Randulla Khan several vigorous green holy warriors of the cresent who shared his vision - Mustafa Khan, Afzal Khan and Asad Khan were the chief of these. There was also the African warrior Siddi Jawhar fighting on their side. The Adil Shah ordered Randulla Khan to lead these forces into the Vijayanagaran territory and systematically attack Darwar, Lakshmeshvar, Penukonda, Vellore, Chandragiri, Shira, Ikkeri and Jinji and plunder the cities and destroy Hindu temples situated there. The renegade brahmin Murar Jagdev tried to negotiate with regards to the Hindus with the Sultan. He was murdered by Pathans sent by Mustafa Khan at night. Shahji who was forced to surrender after being starved in the siege of Mahuli, was asked to accompany the invasionary force with his surviving troops. The Moslem plan was simple but the utter strategic failure of the Vijayanagaran Nayakas and their armies allowed the Army of Islam to execute it. Every invasion they would leave immediately after monsoons and return just before the next monsoons to Bijapur.
In the first invasion (1637 CE) the ghazis of Randulla Khan stormed into Dharwar and Lakshmeshvar destroying and plundering the cities. They then attacked Ikkeri and besieged it. Virabhadra Nayaka exhausted his supplies in the Ikkeri fort in 2 months and was forced to surrender. He ran for life and hid in Bednur, while the Moslems devasted the city. It is claimed that they collected a staggering wealth of 1.8 million gold pieces from the plunder of Ikkeri. The houses of all Hindus were demolished and the males killed and women taken by the Moslems. In the next invasion Randulla Khan sent his deputy Afzal Khan a giant ghazi who was reputed to bend iron bars with his bare hands to destroy Kasturiranga, the prince of Shira. Kasturiranga put up brave fight but soon ran out resources and men in face of the streaming Islamic attacks from Bijapur. Afzal Khan promised to reach a settlement and asked Kasturiranga to meet him in private for the negotiations. When the prince came to meet the Khan, the latter stabbed him to death in course of the meeting. This incident left a profound impression on Shahji who kept as far as away as he could from the Adil Shahi general. Shahji got his chance to grab some land when he saw that Kempe Gauda the fort keeper of Bangalore was offguard. He promptly seized Bangalore and then forced the Wodeyar of Shrirangapattanam to vassalage. In Bangalore he ruled like an independent ruler paying only an occassional tribute to the Adil Shah and sending official messages pledging to be his vassal.
Ranadulla Khan then savaged Basavapattanam after killing Kenge Nayaka and then seized Tumkur, Balapur and Vellore. The Sultan was elated at these successes and had profitted over 40 million coins, with which he embellished Bijapur by erecting several specimens of Saracenic architecture. Shahji was a decent ruler of Bangalore and its surrounding regions--importantly he saved the Hindus in his territory by establishing a Hindu rule with Brahmin ministers rather than subjecting them to the Islamic courts.and soon added Balapur without rousing Adil Shahi suspicion to his territory. His son Sambhaji in his late teens proved his worth by slyly annexing Balapur to Shahji's territory without arousing the Moslems' suspicions. But the Adilshah noted the when Shriranga III came to the Vijayanagaran throne Shahji had opened contacts with him. Simultaneously, Shriranga started organizing a major counter-attack on the Moslems at Vellore and Shivappa Nayaka organizing a force in Bednur seized back Ikkeri from the Moslems.
Adilshah becoming suspicious asked Shahji to come over to Bijapur with his entire family and stay there for several months. Ranadulla Khan, who was generally lenient towards Shahji died around that time (1643), and his replacement Mustafa Khan asked the Sultan to take action on Shahji. Shahji ever aware of self-preservation agreed to toe the Moslem line. However, his young sons Sambhaji and Shivaji noticed this and were filled with the urge of independence. In the Peshve bakhar they are mentioned as explicitly saying that the devas were displeased with Shahji working with the Moslems who were uprooting Hindus and converting the whole country. Whatever the case, either due his young sons' independent thoughts or his own sub-current loyalty to his religion, he was seen my the Moslems as possibly involved secretly siding with the rebellions in Karnataka. So the Adil Shah severely reprimanded him in 1644, and sent Mustafa Khan to deal with the Hindus in the South.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>ENSLAVEMENT OF HINDUS BY ARAB AND TURKISH INVADERS</b>
Turks were not the first Muslims to invade India. Prior to the coming of Turks the Arab general Muhammad bin Qasim invaded Sindh in the early years of the eighth century. In conformity with the Muslim tradition, the Arabs captured and enslaved Indians in large numbers. Indeed from the days of Muhammad bin Qasim in the eighth century to those of Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth, enslavement, distribution, and sale of Hindu prisoners was systematically practised by Muslim invaders and rulers of India. It is but natural that the exertion of a thousand years of slave-taking can only be briefly recounted with a few salient features of the system highlighted.
<b>Enslavement by the Arabs </b>
During the Arab invasion of Sindh (712 C.E.), Muhammad bin Qasim first attacked Debal, a word derived from Deval meaning temple. It was situated on the sea-coast not far from modern Karachi. It was garrisoned by 4000 Kshatriya soldiers and served by 3000 Brahmans. All males of the age of seventeen and upwards were put to the sword and their women and children were enslaved.1 â700 beautiful females, who were under the protection of Budh (that is, had taken shelter in the temple), were all captured with their valuable ornaments, and clothes adorned with jewels.â2 Muhammad despatched one-fifth of the legal spoil to Hajjaj which included seventy-five damsels, the rest four-fifths were distributed among the soldiers.3 Thereafter whichever places he attacked like Rawar, Sehwan, Dhalila, Brahmanabad and Multan, Hindu soldiers and men with arms were slain, the common people fled, or, if flight was not possible, accepted Islam, or paid the poll tax, or died with their religion. Many women of the higher class immolated themselves in Jauhar, most others became prize of the victors. These women and children were enslaved and converted, and batches of them were des-patched to the Caliph in regular installments. For example, after Rawar was taken Muhammad Qasim âhalted there for three days during which he massacred 6000 (men). Their followers and dependents, as well as their women and children were taken prisoner.â Later on âthe slaves were counted, and their number came to 60, 000 (of both sexes?). Out of these, 30 were young ladies of the royal blood⦠Muhammad Qasim sent all these to Hajjajâ who forwarded them to Walid the Khalifa. âHe sold some of these female slaves of royal birth, and some he presented to others.â4 Selling of slaves was a common practice. âFrom the seventh century onwards and with a peak during Muhammad al-Qasimâs campaigns in 712-13â, writes Andre Wink, âa considerable number of Jats was captured as prisoners of war and deported to Iraq and elsewhere as slaves.â5 Jats here is obviously used as a general word for all Hindus. In Brahmanabad, âit is said that about six thousand fighting men were slain, but according to others sixteen thousand were killedâ, and their families enslaved.6 The garrison in the fort-city of Multan was put to the sword, and families of the chiefs and warriors of Multan, numbering about six thousand, were enslaved.
In Sindh female slaves captured after every campaign of the marching army, were converted and married to Arab soldiers who settled down in colonies established in places like Mansura, Kuzdar, Mahfuza and Multan. The standing instructions of Hajjaj to Muhammad bin Qasim were to âgive no quarter to infidels, but to cut their throatsâ, and take the women and children as captives.7 In the final stages of the conquest of Sindh, âwhen the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Qasim⦠one-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number⦠(they belonged to high families) and veils were put on their faces, and the rest were given to the soldiersâ.8 Obviously a few lakh women were enslaved in the course of Arab invasion of Sindh.
<b>Ghaznavid capture of Hindu slaves </b>
If such were the gains of the âmildâ Muhammad bin Qasim in enslaving kaniz wa ghulam in Sindh, the slaves captured by Mahmud of Ghazni, âthat ferocious and insatiable conquerorâ, of the century beginning with the year 1000 C.E. have of course to be counted in hundreds of thousands. Henry Elliot and John Dowson have sifted the available evidence from contemporary and later sources-from Utbiâs Tarikh-i-Yamini, Nizamuddin Ahmadâs Tabqat-i-Akbari, the Tarikh-i-Alai and the Khulasat-ut-Tawarikh to the researches of early European scholars. Mohammad Habib, Muhammad Nazim, Wolseley Haig and I myself have also studied these invasions in detail.9 All evidence points to the fact that during his seventeen invasions, Mahmud Ghaznavi enslaved a very large number of people in India. Although figures of captives for each and every campaign have not been provided by contemporary chroniclers, yet some known numbers and data about the slaves taken by Mahmud speak for themselves.
When Mahmud Ghaznavi attacked Waihind in 1001-02, he took 500,000 persons of both sexes as captive. This figure of Abu Nasr Muhammad Utbi, the secretary and chronicler of Mahmud, is so mind-boggling that Elliot reduces it to 5000.10 The point to note is that taking of slaves was a matter of routine in every expedition. Only when the numbers were exceptionally large did they receive the notice of the chroniclers. So that in Mahmudâs attack on Ninduna in the Punjab (1014), Utbi says that âslaves were so plentiful that they became very cheap; and men of respectability in their native land (India) were degraded by becoming slaves of common shop-keepers (in Ghazni)â.11 His statement finds confirmation in later chronicles including Nizamuddin Ahmadâs Tabqat-i-Akbari which states that Mahmud âobtained great spoils and a large number of slavesâ. Next year from Thanesar, according to Farishtah, âthe Muhammadan army brought to Ghaznin 200,000 captives so that the capital appeared like an Indian city, for every soldier of the army had several slaves and slave girlsâ.12 Thereafter slaves were taken in Baran, Mahaban, Mathura, Kanauj, Asni etc. When Mahmud returned to Ghazni in 1019, the booty was found to consist of (besides huge wealth) 53,000 captives. Utbi says that âthe number of prisoners may be conceived from the fact that, each was sold for from two to ten dirhams. These were afterwards taken to Ghazna, and the merchants came from different cities to purchase them, so that the countries of Mawarau-un-Nahr, Iraq and Khurasan were filled with themâ. The Tarikh-i-Alfi adds that the fifth share due to the Saiyyads was 150,000 slaves, therefore the total number of captives comes to 750,000.13
Before proceeding further, let us try to answer two questions which arise out of the above study. First, how was it that people could be enslaved in such large numbers? Was there no resistance on their part? And second, what did the victors do with these crowds of captives?
During war it was not easy for the Muslim army to capture enemy troops. They were able-bodied men, strong and sometimes âdemon likeâ. It appears that capturing such male captives was a very specialised job. Special efforts were made by âexpertsâ to surround individuals or groups, hurl lasso or ropes around them, pin them down, and make them helpless by binding them with cords of hide, ropes of hessian and chains and shackles of iron. Non-combatant males, women and children of course could be taken comparatively easily after active soldiers had been killed in battle. The captives were made terror-stricken. It was a common practice to raise towers of skulls of the killed by piling up their heads in mounds. All captives were bound hand and foot and kept under strict surveillance of armed guards until their spirit was completely broken and they could be made slaves, converted, sold or made to serve on sundry duties.
In a letter Hajjaj instructed Muhammad bin Qasim on how to deal with the adversary. âThe way of granting pardon prescribed by law is that when you encounter the unbelievers, strike off their heads⦠make a great slaughter among them⦠(Those that survive) bind them in bonds⦠grant pardon to no one of the enemy and spare none of themâ etc., etc.14 The lives of some prisoners could be spared, but they could not be released. That is how the Arab invaders of Sindh could enslave thousands of men and women at Debal, Rawar and Brahmanabad. At Brahmanabad, after many people were killed, âall prisoners of or under the age of 30 years were put in chains⦠All the other people capable of bearing arms were beheaded and their followers and dependents were made prisoners.â15
That is also how Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave 500,000 âbeautiful men and womenâ in Waihind after he had killed 15,000 fighting men in a âsplendid actionâ in November 1001 C.E. Utbi informs us that Jaipal, the Hindu Shahiya king of Kabul, âhis children and grandchildren, his nephews, and the chief men of his tribe, and his relatives, were taken prisoners, and being strongly bound with ropes, were carried before the Sultan (Mahmud) like common evil-doers⦠Some had their arms forcibly tied behind their backs, some were seized by the cheek, some were driven by blows on their neck.â16 In every campaign of Mahmud large-scale massacres preceded enslavement.
The sight of horrendous killing completely unnerved the captives. Not only were the captives physically tortured, they were also morally shattered. They were systematically humiliated and exposed to public ridicule. When prisoners from Sindh were sent to the Khalifa, âthe slaves, who were chiefly daughters of princes and Ranas, were made to stand in a line along with the menials (literally shoe-bearers)â.17 Hodivala gives details of the humiliation of Jaipal at the hands of Mahmud. He writes that Jaipal âwas publicly exposed at one of the slave-auctions in some market in Khurasan, just like the thousands of other Hindu captives⦠(He) was paraded about so that his sons and chieftains might see him in that condition of shame, bonds and disgrace⦠inflicting upon him the public indignity of âcommingling him in one common servitudeâ.18 No wonder that in the end Jaipal immolated himself, for such humiliation was inflicted deliberately to smash the morale of the captives. In short, once reduced to such straits, the prisoners, young or old, ugly or handsome, princes or commoners could be flogged, converted, sold for a tuppence or made to work as menials.
It may be argued that Mahmud of Ghazni could enslave people in hundreds of thousands because his raids were of a lightning nature when defence preparedness was not satisfactory. But even when the Muslim position was not that strong, say, during Mahmudâs son Ibrahimâs campaign in Hindustan when âa fierce struggle ensued, but Ibrahim at length gained victory, and slew many of them. Those who escaped fled into the jungles. Nearly 100,000 of their women and children were taken prisonersâ¦â19 In this statement lies the answer to our first problem. There was resistance and determined resistance so that all the people of a family or village or town resisted the invaders in unison. If they succeeded, they drove away the attackers. If not, they tried to escape into nearby forests.20 If they could not escape at all they were made captives but then all together. They did not separate from one another even in the darkest hour. Indeed adversity automatically bound them together. So they determined to swim or sink together.
Besides, right from the days of prophet Muhammad, and according to his instructions, writes Margoliouth, âparting of a captive mother from her child was forbidden⦠The parting of brothers when sold was similarly forbidden. On the other hand captive wife might at once become the concubine of the conqueror.â21 This precept of not separating the captives but keeping them together was motivated by no humanitarian consideration but it surely swelled their numbers to the advantage of the victors. Hence large numbers of people were enslaved.
And now our second question - what did the victors do with slaves captured in large crowds? In the days of the early invaders like Muhammad bin Qasim and Mahmud Ghaznavi, they were mostly sold in the Slave Markets that had come up throughout the Muslim dominated towns and cities. Lot of profit was made by selling slaves in foreign lands. Isami gives the correct position. Muhammad Nazim in an article has translated relevant lines of Isamiâs metrical composition.22 âHe (Mahmud) scattered the army of the Hindus in one attack and took Rai Jaipal prisoner. He carried him to the distant part of his kingdom of Ghazni and delivered him to an agent of the Slave Market (dalal-i-bazar). I heard that at the command of the king (Mahmud), the Brokers of the Market, (maqiman-i-bazar in the original) sold Jaipal as a slave for 80 Dinars and deposited the money realised by the sale in the Treasury.â23
When Muslim rule was established in India, the sale of captives became restricted. Large numbers of them were drafted for manning the establishments of kings and nobles, working as labourers in the construction of buildings, cutting jungles and making roads, and on so many other jobs. Still they were there, enough and to spare. Those who could be spared were sold in and outside the country, where slave markets, slave merchants and slave brokers did a flourishing business, and the rulers made profit out of their sale.
Mahmud of Ghazni had marched into Hindustan again and again to wage jihad and spread the Muhammadan religion, to lay hold of its wealth, to destroy its temples, to enslave its people, sell them abroad and thereby earn profit, and to add to Muslim numbers by converting the captives. He even desired to establish his rule in India.24 His activities were so multi-faceted that it is difficult to determine his priorities. But the large number of captives carried away by him indicates that taking of slaves surely occupied an anteriority in his scheme of things. He could obtain wealth by their sale and increase the Muslim population by their conversion.
Footnotes:
1 C.H.I., III, 3.
2 Al Kufi, Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 84.
3 C.H.I., III, 3.
4 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 154. Raja Dahirâs daughters also were counted among slave girls, 196. E.D., I, 172-73 gives the number of captives as 30,000.
5 Andre Wink, Al Hind, 161.
6 Mohammad Habib, âThe Arab conquest of Sind.â in Politics and Society During the Early Medieval Period, being Collected Works, of Habib, ed. K.A. Nizami, II, 1-35. Al Biladuri, 122, has 8000 to 26000.
7 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 155; E.D.I, 173, 211.
8 Ibid., 163; E.D., I, 181.
9 Appendix D, âMahmudâs invasions of India,â in E.D., II, 434-478.
Habib, Sultan Mahmud of Ghaznin, 23-59.
M. Nazim, The Life and Times of Mahmud of Ghazni, 42-122.
Lal, Growth of Muslim Population, 102-04, 211-16.
10 Tarikh-i-Yamini, E.D., II, 26; Elliotâs Appendix, 438; Farishtah, I, 24.
11 Utbi, E.D., II, 39.
12 Farishtah, I, 28.
13 Lai, Growth of Muslim Population in Medieval India, 211-13; also Utbi, E-.D., II, 50 and n. 1.
14 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 155 and n.
15 Ibid., 83-86, 154, 159, 161 ff.
16 Utbi, E.D., II, 26. Minhaj, 607, n., 5. Al Utbi and other chroniclers refer to Jaipal on many occasions. H.G. Raverty suggests that âJaipal appears to be the title, not the actual name, of two or more personsâ, Minhaj, 81n.
17 Chachnama, Kalichbeg, 152.
18 Hodivala, 192-93.
19 Maulana Ahmad and others, Tarikh-i-Alfi, E.D., V, 163; Farishtah, I, 49.
20 Lai, Legacy, 263-68.
21 Margoliouth, Muhammad, 461; also Gibbon, II, 693.
22 In his article âHindu Shahiya kingdom of Ohindâ, in J.R.A.S., 1927.
23 Cited in Hodivala, 192-93.
24 C.E. Bosworth, The Ghaznavids, 235.
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<b>Competitive Massacre</b>
<i>Posted Monday, Sep. 8, 1947</i><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->One-seventh of Lahore, capital of the Punjab, had been destroyed. Scores of nearby towns and villages had been razed. Warâor rather, competitive massacreâbetween Moslems and Sikhs had reached a pitch of horror that made the Indian Mutiny of 1857 look like a mere street brawl.<b> In two weeks, between 40,000 and 150,000 people had been killed in the Punjab. Most of the bodies were too hacked and charred to be recognized. At least a million were homeless.</b>
<b>"Never during two wars have I seen such sights as I have seen these last two days," said a middle-aged British colonel at Lahore airport. "All those atrocity yarns we used to hear, such as Germans cutting Belgian children's hands off and raping and then killing women, have suddenly come true in the Punjab during the last week."</b>
"The Joy of Fraternization." For months the Punjab's communal hatred had been boiling up into slaughter. A previous climax came last spring when hundreds were killed in riots there (TIME, March 17). <b>In mid-August the partition of the Punjab between India and Pakistan left 1.6 of the 3.8 million Sikhs in the province under Moslem rule; at least twice as many Moslems remained on the Indian side of the border in a new East Punjab state.</b>
<span style='color:red'>The Sikhs are an offshoot of the Hindu religion; they organized 300 years ago to resist militantly Moslem oppression. The British had used the warlike Sikhs extensively, giving them land and offices, especially in the fertile, predominantly Moslem West Punjab. In consequence, the Moslems hate Sikhs far more than they do Hindus.</span>
The rest of India was relatively quiet. In once turbulent Calcutta, Mohandas K. Gandhi, still striving for Hindu-Moslem unity, was able to write of the situation there: "One might almost say the joy of fraternization is leaping up from hour to hour."
There was no fraternization in the Punjab. <b>At Amritsar, on the Indian side of the border, organized gangs of Sikhs had exterminated or driven out the Moslem minority population (150,000). Moslems in Lahore and other Pakistan border regions retaliated against the Hindus and Sikhs there</b>.
Mohamed Ali Jinnah, who had conceived Pakistan in hatred and was now its president and undisputed boss, sent to the West Punjab as governor his faithful follower, the Khan of Momdot. The bland, moonfaced Khan had served four years in the Punjab Legislative Assembly without opening his mouth. When he got to the West Punjab, he acted. With his province literally in flames, the Khan of Momdot relaxed regulations that had restricted the carrying of firearms; he also decreed that every man could wear a sword, provided it was covered.
Some of his subordinates went further. The Moslem deputy commissioner of one of the Western Punjab districts mourned a son killed on the Indian side of the border. Said he to the young Moslems: "You have full liberty to go the limit.
Take revenge as you like, but if there is one Hindu or Sikh left alive in my district after you are through, I swear to kill them myself."
"At Lahore's Central Station, Sikh and Hindu refugees from North or West Punjab were mobbed on the platform, often stabbed to death and their few belongings looted.<b> A major incident involved a big convoy carrying perhaps 1,000 from Sialkot to Amritsar. The convoy was stopped and attacked at the Ravi River bridge. Hundreds were stabbed to death and other hundreds wounded.</b>
"<b>Refugees from Lyallpur in West Punjab say that so many Sikhs and Hindus were murdered and their bodies thrown into the canal that the canal actually had a pinkish color for a day after. Moslem refugees told how Sikhs stripped and paraded Moslem women through the streets, raped them and then killed them. British correspondents reported having seen dead, naked women lying about villages of the Amritsar district."</b>
A Look of Satisfaction. "Although railway administrations of both Dominions have doggedly tried to keep a skeleton schedule going, they have now given up.<b> For days on end no trains arrived in Delhi without having been attacked and looted practically all along the route.</b>
<b>"Near Jullundur, a band of Sikhs held up a train, methodically searched all compartments and pulled out 17 Moslems, whom they beheaded on the platform. Most amazing of all was the look of bland satisfaction on the faces of these young Sikh men, their hands dripping blood, their clothes smeared with blood, as they stood and grinned at their handiwork while the train finally pulled out. The only Moslems who escaped on this trip were two who were hidden by two British officers under their baggage.</b>
"A British correspondent traveling in the opposite direction through this territory saw half a dozen lying stabbed on the Lahore platform, slowly dying without any help being given.<b> Later that night, on a small siding south of Amritsar, a band of Sikhs entered his compartment and before his eyes beheaded a Moslem apparently trying to travel disguised as a Hindu. (For identification, both sides use the tried and true means of seeing whether there has been circumcision. Moslems always circumcize, the Hindus and Sikhs practically never.)</b>
"A member of the U.S. Embassy arrived in Lahore from Delhi with another tale of horror. Reaching the small station of Okara, near Montgomery, <b>he found the station platform utterly deserted except for several hundred dead Hindus and Sikhs lying around the platform, apparently slaughtered only a few hours before while waiting for the train to escape. All these people were workers in a textile mill which had been attacked by Moslems. Their bodies were mostly stripped and in several instances limbs had been torn from the bodies. The wife of a British textile factory manager told how a Moslem mob had attacked the Hindu and Sikh workers in another factory. When Moslems broke into the ground floor, the Sikhs slashed the throats of their own wives, and afterwards tried to fight through themselves. All were killed."</b>
Authorities were utterly unable to cope with the situation. I<b>n many cases both Sikh and Moslem police had participated in the riots. </b>British soldiers, present in the Punjab, were not allowed to interfere under the arrangements now in force for Indian independence.
No Plans. For the homeless, crippled refugees, no one had anticipated relief measures. In New Delhi a penniless Hindu woman from the West Punjab clutched her two children, told of her husband's murder by Moslems. "Don't ask her about her plans," cautioned a welfare official, "she hasn't any and neither have we."
The rioting was breaking down railroad traffic between parts of India and Pakistan. Unless it was soon restored, both nations, especially Pakistan, would be economically crippled. Fearing that the Punjab rioting would spread, millions of Hindus and Moslems prepared to cross borders in a transfer of population greater than Europe had ever seen.
In his new capital, Karachi, Jinnah preached that "restraint is necessary." However, the fires of communal hatred, which he had fanned for 20 years, were burning too brightly in the Punjab to be easily stifled. They might spread.
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Time Archive Posted Monday, Oct. 6, 1947
<b>Vicious Circle</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->In little more than a month of independence, India and Pakistan had slipped back 300 years. In both countries last week, rioting, slaughter, rapine, destruction continued. <b>More than 5,000,000 people had become refugees, uncounted thousands had been slain</b>.
Pakistan cried for outside help. To the rest of the British Commonwealth it addressed a plea for aid in ending violence. To the U.N. it proposed that six observers be sent to Pakistan and India. Pakistan's appeal made India shriek.
Cried Congress Party President Acharya Kripalani: "The real solution of the whole ill lies with Pakistan itself." In calling itself an Islamic state, he said, Pakistan had incited Moslems against Sikhs and Hindus, thus drawing reprisals upon Moslems in India. "[We must] base citizenship on a territorial basis and forget . . . that two-nation theory which started the whole vicious circle."
Worse than Death. The venom of communal bitterness had been thickened by the record flare-up of an old frontier practiceâthe abduction of tens of thousands of women. <b>From one train arriving at Amritsar last week, 150 young girls had been taken. In Bikaner State, an official estimated that Sikhs fleeing there from Pakistan had lost 40 of their women. So grave had woman-stealing become that Pakistan's Prime Minister Lia-quat Ali Khan and India's Jawaharlal Nehru held special discussions about it last week; both Governments agreed to hunt out and return abducted women. It would not be easy. The women were scattered far & wide; those taken by Moslems were veiled in purdah. Harder still was the problem of persuading devout Sikhs and Hindus to take their violated women back.</b>
<b>A new threat to peace arose in the heart of Western India. His Highness the Nawab Saheb of Junagadh, a Moslem ruling a predominantly Hindu state, decided to join Pakistan. One of his sub-chiefs, the ruler of Babariawad, applied for admission to India. The Nawab rushed troops to Babariawad. Some 60,000 of his subjects fled to India.</b>
At a Bombay mass meeting, a "revolutionary government" was formed which declared war on the Nawab. The "revolutionary" Premier: Samaldas Laxmidas Gandhi; portly nephew of Mohandas K. Gandhi.
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Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 1947
<b>Death in the Vale</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->From the Magazine | Foreign News
Death in the Vale
SUBSCRIBE TO TIMEPRINTE-MAILMORE BY AUTHOR
Posted Monday, Nov. 10, 1947
"Kashmir without an equalâKashmir, equal to paradise!" generations of Indian pilgrims have chanted. But the destruction that wasted India did not spare Kashmir. Last week Kashmir, the paradisal valley, smoked with two kinds of hellish fury: war and its blinder brother, massacre.
"Free Kashmir." <span style='color:red'>All through the summer, Kashmir's waddling, toss-purse Hindu Maharaja Sir Hari Singh had twisted & turned between India and Pakistan. When armed tribesmen from Pakistan's northwest invaded last month, Sir Hari at last threw out his be jeweled arms to India</span>.
<b>In Moslem Karachi, Pakistan Governor General Mohamed Ali Jinnah raged at the news. He ordered Pakistan troops, under British Lieut. General D. D. Gracey, into Kashmir. The order was not carried out, for in New Delhi British Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck threatened to withdraw British officers from Pakistan's Army.</b>
The raiders from Pakistan were amazingly well equipped. They used automatic guns, mortars,. 3.7-in. field guns, and even light tanks and flamethrowers. Troops of the Indian Dominion, flown in to hold the Maharaja's capital at Srinagar, the down-at-heel "Venice of the Orient," tried strafing the invaders from Spitfires of the Indian Air Force. But the raiders were through the outlying passes now and inside the lovely Vale of Kashmir itself. They pressed closer on Srinagar, and, on the march, proclaimed Azad KashmirâFree Kashmir.
"Is Pakistan Too Weak?" Even more ominous were the reports that the blind butchery of neighbor by neighbor had reached Kashmir. <b>Pakistan heard that 50,000 Moslems had been slaughtered by Hindus. British officials said that 100,000 fleeing refugees from Kashmir and nearby Jammu had crowded south into the still reeking Punjab.</b>
Heretofore, British and Europeans had been fairly safe. But they were no longer safe in Kashmir. <b>Mahsud tribesmen burst into a hospital at Baramulla last week, killed a British officer, his wife and two nuns</b>.
<b>Rather late, the Maharaja of Kashmir took measures to prop up his throne. He released from 15-month imprisonment the revered leader of the Kashmir Congress (India) Party, 6 ft. 4 in. tall Sheik Mohamed Abdullah, a Moslem but a follower of India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.</b>
<b>The Maharaja made Abdullah his prime minister, promised to be a constitutional ruler in future; then the Maharaja lit out for the relative safety of his other princely state, Jammu. In New Delhi this week Prime Minister Nehru called for a U.N. plebiscite, shouted: "Is the Pakistan Government too weak to prevent armies from marching across its territory to invade another country?" </b>
Sex & Christianity. Britons in Kashmir began to pack. At the Srinagar Club there were tea dancing and dinner jackets as usual, but the residents were signing up for planes and road convoys that would take them south, <b>like Sir Hari Singh. One trouble was the pet dogs, the Lhassa terriers, Afghan hounds and Pomeranians. Transportation was short, and, it turned out, there were more dogs than Britons on the evacuation list.</b>
At the club, the tension unavoidably brought out personality. A somewhat thyroid spinster from Lahore passed around the manuscript of a sex novel she had been working on. One handlebar-mustached old colonel, who had spent 40 seasons in Kashmir, refused to leave. Said he: "Good God, no! I'll just pull my houseboat over another mile or so and forget the trouble." The Hindu pianist who played an Indian version of boogie woogie at the houseboat-cabaret Bluebird had a different solution. <b>He bought a new, heavy, imported Scotch tweed suit with heavy overcoat and tweed cap. Asked if he were not afraid of the approaching Moslem tribesmen, he giggled loudly, exclaimed: "Lord, no! I have become a Christian</b>."<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<b>Unpickled</b><!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Posted Monday, Dec. 29, 1947
Leather-tough old Vallabhbhai Patel, Minister in Charge of States Affairs, last week saw a chance to get rid of some of the princely states that pimple India. In little Nilgiri, near the east coast, Hindu Congress Party members who live in towns on the plains have been trying to get rid of their maharaja and join the Dominion.<b> But most of his subjects are broad-faced, pug-nosed aborigines, who fled to the eastern hills nearly 40 centuries ago when Aryans invaded India</b>. These near-naked tribesmen came down from the hills on the warpath (at the maharaja's prompting, said Congress supporters).
They swarmed about isolated Hindu towns, brandishing the four-foot bamboo bows and bamboo arrows, winged with vulture feathers, which they still use for hunting and war. The townsmen called for help. Patel ordered Orissa Province to take over the administration of Nilgiri. Police armed with rifles marched in from Orissa and scattered the aborigines. Then Patel took a train to Cuttack, capital of Orissa.
There he summoned the rulers of some two dozen eastern states who had so far not joined India. All but one (the tribesman ruler of Ranpur) are Hindus; their states are peopled largely by the aborigines. Patel ordered the princes to surrender all their powers. In return they could keep their titles, personal property, and get a tax-free pension (7½ to 15% of their states' incomes). More than a dozen, in a midnight ceremony, signed Patel's terms. Next morning, Patel got on a train for Nagpur, capital of the Central Provinces. But Patel's secretary did not turn up. The train waited an hour. A search party sent by Patel found the secretary signing up the remaining maharajas who had balked the night before.
Next day in Nagpur, Patel got reluctant signatures from a dozen more maharajas. <b>He returned to Delhi from his whirlwind trip within 96 hours from the time he set out, with eight million more people and 56,000 more square miles of territory (about the size of Illinois) for India</b>.
<b>The States Ministry hinted that about 340 other rulers would soon be converted into remittance men. "There are in India," said Patel ominously, "about 500 small states*âmore than the total number of independent states in the world. Former alien rulers of our land preserved them like pickles, but now paramountcy has gone and India has become free." When one ruler asked whether India would guarantee that his new pension would be permanent, Patel answered, "Nobody can provide for all times." </b>
*Of the 525 remaining princely states in India, fewer than 50 have more than half a million people. All the princely states except big Hyderabad (16,000,000) have surrendered control of their defense, communications and transport to the central government.
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