Land of seven rivers: History of India's Geography

by Sanyal, Sanjeev

  THE PARTITION

  Much has been written about the political events that led to the partition of India. Given the geographical focus of this book, I do not wish to recount these events except to say that, at its core, it was the result of a fundamental disagreement about the nature of India’s civilizational nationhood. Indeed, Mohammad Ali Jinnah explicitly stated his demand for Pakistan in civilizational terms on several occasions. It is not a divergence in world view that appeared suddenly with Jinnah in the 1930s. It can be traced back centuries to the differences between the Emperors Akbar and Aurangzeb. In fact, the intellectual origins of Pakistan are derived from a sixteenth-century Islamic scholar from Punjab, Ahmad al-Sirhindi. A prominent member of the Naqshbandi Sufi order, Sirhindi loudly denounced Akbar’s eclectic beliefs and his liberal attitude. In order to understand the subsequent history of Pakistan, therefore, it may be more instructive to read Sirhindi rather than Jinnah.

  As the country hurtled towards independence in the mid-1940s, the demands of the Muslim League became increasingly strident. Amid growing tensions and frequent riots, the decision was taken to divide India along religious lines. The meeting that finalized Partition was held on 2 June 1947 in Viceroy Mountbatten’s study, under a large oil painting of Robert Clive1. The Indian National Congress was represented by Jawaharlal Nehru, Sardar Patel and Acharya Kripalani. The Muslim League was represented by Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan and Rab Nishtar. In addition, there was Baldev Singh representing the Sikhs. Lord Ismay and Sir Eric Miéville, two of the Viceroy’s key advisers, sat along the wall. The decision was announced at 7 p.m. on 3 June on All India Radio. The Viceroy spoke first, followed by Nehru and then by Jinnah. Pakistan was a reality.

  No date had been announced for the handover. However, when Viceroy Mountbatten was later asked about it at a press conference, he replied that the final transfer of power to Indian hands would happen on 15 August—just seventy-two days later! It appears that this was a unilateral decision Mountbatten made—he had not consulted the Indian National Congress, the Muslim League or even Downing Street about it. It was a shock to everyone. It is unclear why Mountbatten opted for this date; it may have been no more than a sentimental attachment to the day on which the Japanese had surrendered to the Allies in 1945. It is instructive how the twists and turns of history can often be based on the most arbitrary of factors.

  The partition of India was a major project. Writers Lapierre and Collins have aptly dubbed it ‘the most complex divorce in history’ and yet it had to be completed within a few weeks. Everything from the apparatus of the State, including the army, to government assets and debts had to be divided fairly between two sovereign countries. Even chairs, tables, petty cash, books and postage stamps had to be divided. There were many arguments, and often over very petty things. Sets of Encyclopaedia Britannica in government libraries were divided up. There is a story of how the instruments of the police band in Lahore were divided up—a drum for India, a trumpet for Pakistan and so on. In the end, the last trombone was left and the two sides almost came to blows over it. As often happens, the madness of the situation is best captured in fiction; Manto’s ‘Toba Tek Singh’ is a short story about how the inmates of Lahore’s mental asylum had to be divided up along communal grounds.

  The frictions over dividing government property were minor compared to the real business of dividing territory, particularly the two large provinces of Punjab and Bengal. This job fell to a London barrister, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. He was considered one of the most brilliant lawyers of his time but had had nothing to do with India. His unfamiliarity with India was considered a major advantage as it was felt that this was the only way to ensure impartiality. On 27 June he was called to the office of the Lord Chancellor and given the job. Radcliffe must have been stunned when he heard this. He was being asked to decide the fate of millions of people with no previous knowledge of the territories that he was expected to divide. He must have known that, no matter what he did, his decisions would lead to unhappiness and bloodshed. It was the worst job in the world.

  Radcliffe set to work in the sweltering July heat from a lonely bungalow in the Viceregal estate in Delhi. Given the paucity of time, he had no opportunity to visit the lands that he had to divide. Instead, he had to trace out a boundary line on a Royal Engineers map with merely population statistics and maps for company. If he had not already known it, he would soon have realized the near-impossibility of what he was expected to do. The Hindu and Muslim enclaves were haphazardly mixed up. The city of Lahore, for example, was split exactly between the Muslim and the Hindu–Sikh populations (600,000 each). Similarly, Amritsar was a holy city for the Sikhs, but was surrounded by Muslim-majority areas. There were other factors to be considered as well. In Bengal, Calcutta was the main industrial cluster and had a Hindu majority. However, the raw jute for its jute mills came from the Muslim-majority east. In Punjab, critical irrigation systems had to be severed. The barrister would have pondered these issues in the solitude of his bungalow.

  Even as Radcliffe was drawing his line, communal violence continued to escalate across the countryside. Refugees were already on the move even before the border had been demarcated. The maps that would decide the fate of millions was delivered to the Viceroy on 13 August, but they were not made public for seventy-two hours. Thus, when India became independent on 15 August, many Indians along the borderlands did not know in which country their homes would fall. The maps were made public a day later and the bloodbath began. People were on the move—on trains, on bullock-carts and on foot—holding on to whatever they could salvage of their former lives. It is estimated that about 7 million Muslims moved from India to Pakistan and a similar Hindu–Sikh population shifted from Pakistan to India. Meanwhile, a disenchanted Radcliffe returned to his London chambers. He returned the 2000 pounds that he had received for his services.

  The Hindus and Sikhs who fled West Paksitan were directed to hundreds of refugee camps. One of the largest camps was in Kurukshetra, the battlefield where the Pandavas and Kauravas are said to have fought each other in the Mahabharata. The camp was planned for 100,000, but three times the number came to inhabit it by December 1947.2 Half a million refugees, mostly from West Punjab, came to Delhi. These desperate people squatted wherever they could, including the pavements of Connaught Circus. In time, they would build homes in ‘colonies’ allotted to them in the south and west of Lutyens’s garden city. We know them today as Lajpat Nagar, Rajendra Nagar, Punjabi Bagh and so on. A smaller group of refugees from East Pakistan also made their way to Delhi and were settled in East Pakistan Displaced Persons Colony. Now renamed Chittaranjan Park, it retains a distinct Bengali identity. Thus, within a few decades, Delhi had gone from being city of Mughal memories to a grand Imperial dream and then to a city of refugees.

  If the migration happened in one big rush in Punjab, it was spread over many years in Bengal. A series of anti-Hindu riots in East Pakistan in 1949–50 forced a second spike in refugee movements, with 1.7 million coming to West Bengal in 1950 alone.3 A steady trickle continued for over a decade. Indeed, many members of my mother’s family made the shift only in the early sixties. The luckier refugees stayed with relatives and friends but, as in Delhi, many squatted wherever they could—in railways stations, unoccupied homes, vacant land and even barracks. There have been accusations, arguably true, that the national government in Delhi did far less to rehabilitate the Bengali refugees than their Punjabi counterparts. Still, unlike in West Pakistan, a sizeable Hindu population continued to live in East Pakistan. They would face a second crisis two decades later.

  Despite all their troubles, the Punjabis and Bengalis at least had provinces, namely West Bengal and East Punjab, that they could call their own. The sorriest communities, therefore, were those that could no longer lay claim to any territory. For instance, the Sindhi Hindus found that their entire province was part of Pakistan. Many of them headed for Bombay, where they were accommodated in five refugee camps. A concentration o
f Sindhis remains in Ulhasnagar, an industrial suburb of Mumbai. Over the years, however, they have migrated all over the world and today run a network of international businesses. Hong Kong, for instance, has a significant number of successful Sindhi business families. I have attended Sindhi community gatherings in the former British colony. It is touching to see how old customs have been lovingly kept alive by a generation that has had no contact with the original homeland.

  ABSORBING THE PRINCELY STATES

  The partition of British India was not the only territorial problem faced by the country at independence. Over a third of the country was ruled by princes, over 500 of them. Some of them ruled kingdoms that were as big as major European countries, while others ruled only a few villages. Some of them had survived from before the Islamic conquests. It says a lot about the spirit of the times and the persuasive powers of the negotiators that, after a lot of grumbling, the occasional theatrics and some last-minute bargaining, almost all of them signed over their kingdoms to the new democracy by the 15 August deadline (of course, some also opted for Pakistan). There were three important exceptions to this—Junagarh in the west, Hyderabad in the south, and Jammu and Kashmir in the extreme north. The first two had Muslim rulers but a Hindu-majority population, while the reverse was true of Jammu and Kashmir.

  Junagarh was not just wedged within Indian territory but was also of great symbolic value. Within its borders were the ancient temple of Somnath and the sacred hill of Girnar with its numerous Hindu–Jain temples. At the base of the hill, and a short walk from the Junagarh fort, are the rock inscriptions of Ashoka, Rudradaman and Skandagupta. In addition, it is home to the last Asiatic lions left in the wild. In 1947, it was ruled by Nawab Mohabat Khan, best remembered for his love of dogs. It is said that he owned 2000 pedigree dogs and that when two of his favourites mated, the ‘wedding’ was celebrated as a State event.

  In the summer of 1947, Mohabat Khan was on holiday in Europe but had left the country in hands of his Dewan, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, a Sindhi politician and the father of future Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. When the Nawab returned, Bhutto convinced him to opt out of India. On 14 August 1947, just hours before the handover, Junagarh declared itself for Pakistan! A few weeks later, Pakistan accepted the accession. The local population, 82 per cent Hindu, and India’s leaders were enraged. Deputy Prime Minister Patel, himself a Gujarati, responded by getting two of Junagarh’s vassal states to declare for India. A small military force was sent in to support them. Meanwhile, a popular agitation began to gather momentum. The Nawab panicked and fled to Karachi, taking with him a dozen of his favourite dogs! With his back to the wall, Sir Shah Nawaz agreed to a plebiscite that overwhelmingly voted in favour of India.

  The period of political uncertainty in Junagarh meant that the lions of Gir suffered. With the Nawab’s protection crumbling, several lions were hunted down in the later months of 1947. It is said that some of the hunters were princes of neighbouring principalities who simply took advantage of the confusion to add to their private collections. Thankfully, order was restored by early 1948. This was not merely an act of wildlife conservation. The lion, as depicted on the Mauryan pillar in Sarnath, was now the national emblem. There had been some who argued in favour of the elephant but a committee headed by future president Rajendra Prasad had ruled in favour of the lion in July 1947. The same committee also decided that the flag of the Indian National Congress would be adopted as the national flag after replacing the symbol of the ‘charkha’ (spinning wheel) with that of the spoked wheel from the same Mauryan column—the ancient symbol of the Chakravartin or Universal Monarch. After thousands of years, Sudas’s dream was still alive.

  Even as the Junagarh crisis was being resolved, a fresh crisis was brewing in Hyderabad, a leftover from Aurangzeb’s invasion of southern India. It was the largest of the princely states and its ruler Nizam Osman Ali Khan was famous as one of the richest and most miserly men in the world. Although the state had an overwhelming Hindu majority, the Muslims dominated the police, civil service and the landowning nobility. It even had a sizeable army that included armoured units as well as Arab and Afghan mercenaries. Faced with the withdrawal of the British, the Nizam first attempted to negotiate some form of independence and then hinted that he would opt for Pakistan.

  The threat was never really tenable since Hyderabad was a landlocked state surrounded by Indian territory. Still, the Nizam was persuaded by Kasim Razvi, an Islamic fanatic, to allow the creation of an irregular paramilitary group called the Razakdars, which had 200,000 members at its height. As the political situation deteriorated, the Razakdars unleashed a reign of terror in the countryside. India responded by tightening an economic blockade. Finally in September 1948, more than a year after independence, Deputy Prime Minister Patel decided to move. The military action was named Operation Polo, supposedly because of the large number of polo grounds in Hyderabad.

  The Indian army columns entered Hyderabad state on 13 September and were met with some resistance from the Razakdars as well as from regular troops. However, the result was never in doubt and, by the morning of 17 September, it was all over. The surrender was surprisingly meek. Time magazine (issue of 27 September 1948) tells the story of how the surrender took place a few miles outside the city. The commander-in-chief of Hyderabad’s army, a black-mustached Arab called Major General Syed Ahmed El Erdoos drove up in a shiny Buick. He then walked up to Major General Chaudhuri, the Indian field commander. ‘They shook hands, lit cigarettes and talked quietly while the spellbound villagers looked on’.4

  The story of Jammu and Kashmir, however, is very different. Here a Hindu prince ruled over a Muslim-majority kingdom. However, the overall Muslim majority obscured a more complicated situation on the ground. The north-east of the state was Ladakh, a large but sparsely populated area dominated by Buddhists. To the north-west were the equally sparsely populated areas of Gilgit and Baltistan. The population here was Muslim but from the Shia and Ismaili sects rather than the Sunni branch. In the middle was Kashmir itself, including the Valley, relatively densely populated and largely Sunni, albeit with significant Sikh, Hindu and Shia minorities. Finally, to the south was Jammu, home to the Dogra Rajputs who had conquered this kingdom, with a Hindu population boosted by recent refugees from West Punjab. Unlike Junagarh and Hyderabad, moreover, this state shared borders with both India and Pakistan. This meant that it was feasible for it to choose sides. Yet, Maharaja Hari Singh had visions of remaining independent as some sort of Asian Switzerland. The situation could not have been more complex.

  One will never know how things may have eventually resolved themselves because the flow of history was hijacked by an unexpected turn of events. On 22 October 1947, thousands of armed Pakhtun tribesmen from Pakistan’s North West poured into Kashmir. No one knows for sure exactly who organized or instigated them, although they certainly had the support of newly formed Pakistan. Their initial progress was quick and largely unopposed. The remote mountain valleys were cut off from the rest of the world and even Hari Singh had no idea what was happening. The ruler only realized the seriousness of the situation when the invaders blew up Mahura power station, plunging the state into darkness. The tribesmen were just 75 km away from Srinagar, the capital. At this stage, they could just have driven down the short undefended and well-paved road and taken over. However, greed overpowered strategy and religious fervour. The tribesmen indulged in an orgy of rape and plunder where they spared neither Hindu nor Muslim. They also stopped to rape the European nuns of a Franciscan mission in Baramullah, barely 50 km from the capital. All this delayed their progress by a critical forty-eight hours.

  The Indian authorities in Delhi first heard of the invasion from a very curious source. Remember that this was barely two months after independence, and the Commanders-in-Chief of both the Indian and Pakistani armies were British. The Commander-in-Chief of the Pakistan army was Major General Douglas Gracey who received secret intelligence reports of what was
going on in Kashmir.5 The first thing he did was to pick up his phone in Rawalpindi and call his Sandhurst classmate Lt. General Rob Lockhart, the Commander-in-Chief of the Indian army! It did not take long for Mountbatten and Nehru to find out what was happening.

  Given the desperate situation, it was not difficult to convince a panicky Hari Singh to sign an Instrument of Accession in favour of India. By the morning of 27 October, Indian troops had secured Srinagar airport and were landing men and supplies. The tribesmen had lost the initiative and had been stopped at the gates of the city. Jinnah was furious. Bit by bit, the Indians began to push the invaders out even as the bitterly cold winter set in. It bears mention here that one of the heroes of the Indian side was Brigadier Mohammad Usman, a Muslim officer who had opted to stay with India. He would later be killed in battle in July 1948.

  The first Indo–Pak war in Kashmir dragged on through 1948. Although Srinagar had been secured, western Kashmir, Gilgit and Baltistan remained in Pakistani hands. For a while, Pakistan even took over the strategically important towns of Kargil and Dras and threatened Ladakh. However, by November 1948, Indian troops had cleared the two towns and secured supply lines to Ladakh. (Half a century later, Pakistan would try to recapture the towns in what is now known as the Kargil war of 1999.) Given the momentum, some Indian commanders wanted to push ahead. However, they were refused permission. The matter now shifted to the United Nations. The cease-fire positions of December 1948 have come to be the effective boundary between the two countries. This border was designated the ‘Line of Control’ as per the Simla Accord of 1972.

  On 26 January 1950, the country threw off the last vestige of British rule by declaring itself a Republic. By now, India’s borders were recognizably like those that we know today. The country had a population of 359 million or 14.2 per cent of the world’s population (by comparison, China had 546 million people and the United States 152 million). However, its share of world economy stood at a mere 4.2 per cent in 1950 compared to 16 per cent in 1820, and a far cry from the 30–33 per cent that it had enjoyed in ancient times. Note that in 1950, the United States was by far the largest economy in the world with a 27 per cent share. Ravaged by war, the Chinese economy was just a tad larger than India’s. After adjusting for relative population sizes, even dirt-poor India had a per capita income level that was 40 per cent higher than the Chinese level.6