The Great Partition

by Yasmin Khan

  14. Seth Ramkrishna Dalmia, Some Notes and Reminiscences (Bombay: Times of India Press, 1948), pp. 29–30.

  15. Congress resolution on Partition of Punjab, 8 March 1947.

  16. UP Hindu Mahasabha Papers, P–108 (Part 1) (1947); Gist of conversation between Sampurnanand and Mahasabha leaders, 22 July 1947 agreed by Sampurnanand. Prithwiraj was the last Rajput (and therefore ‘Hindu’) ruler of Delhi. He ruled in the twelfth century, was killed in battle with Afghans and was succeeded by Mohammed Ghori. For a close interpretation of Sampurnanand's political ideology see William Gould, Hindu Nationalism and the Language of Politics in Late Colonial India (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 166–80.

  17. Alan Campbell Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (London: Robert Hale, 1951), pp. 64–73.

  18. Ibid., p. 47.

  19. JP, 1st ser., vol. 2, p. 416. Jinnah to Patrick Lacey, 22 June 1947.

  20. L. Carter, ed., Mountbatten's Report on the Last Viceroyalty 22 March to 15 August 1947 (Delhi: Manohar, 2003), p. 188.

  21. Times of India, 4 June 1947.

  22. JP, 1st ser., vol. 2, p. 51, 4 June 1947.

  23. Times of India, 5 June, 1947.

  24. Moon, Divide and Quit,p.68.

  25. S.S. Ikramullah, From Purdah to Parliament (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 154.

  26. JP, 1st ser., vol. 3, pp. 842–3. Minutes of the meeting of the All India Muslim League, 9 June 1947.

  27. JP, 1st ser., vol. 2, pp. 141–2, 10 June 1947.

  28. S.M. Burke, ed., Jinnah: Speeches and Statements, 1947–8 (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2000), p. 25. Constituent Assembly Address, 11 Aug. 1947.

  29. IOR L/PJ/5/276, FR, second half June 1947.

  30. IOR L/PJ/5/276, FR, second half May 1947.

  31. IOR L/PJ/5/168, Fortnightly report, 3 June 1947.

  32. A. Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual and Community in South Asian Islam Since 1850 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001), pp. 539, 543.

  33. Times of India, 9 June 1947.

  34. Shahid Hamid, Disastrous Twilight: A Personal Record of the Partition of India (London: Cooper and Secker and Warburg, 1986), p. 178.

  35. Ibid. p. 180.

  36. Civil and Military Gazette, 17 July 1947.

  37. JP, 1st series, vol. 2, p. 609, letter to Jinnah, 30 June 1947.

  38. AICC Resolution on 3 June plan, passed 14 June 1947. TOP, vol. 11, p. 398.

  39. USSA 845.006–647 Box 6070, Gordon Minnigerode to US Secretary of State, 6 June 1947. Reactions in Karachi and Sind to the British Plan for the Partition of India.

  40. Sumathi Ramaswamy, ‘Maps and Mother Goddesses in Modern India,’ Imago Mundi, vol. 53 (2001), pp. 97–114. On the intersections between gender and the shaping of nationalism see also Mrinalini Sinha, Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2006).

  41. IOR L/PJ/5/168, Fortnightly report 18 July 1947.

  42. USSA, 845.00/5–147–845.00/7–3047 Box 6070, State Department Records.

  43. Hindustan Times, 11 June 1947.

  44. T. Tan and G. Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 163.

  45. Rajendra Prasad, 3 June 1947, cited in Raghuvendra Tanwar, Reporting the Partition of Punjab, 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2006), p. 167.

  46. J. Chatterji, Bengal Divided: Hindu Communalism and Partition, 1932–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 260; Times of India, 9 June 1947.

  47. CWMG, vol. 88, p. 374. Speech at prayer meeting, 19 July 1947; UPSA General Administration, Box 659, 169/1. Resolution passed 10 Aug. 1947.

  48. Malcolm Darling, At Freedom's Door (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1949), p. 307.

  49. L. Carter, ed., Mountbatten's Report on the last Viceroyalty: 22 March–15 August 1947 (Delhi: Manohar, 2003), p. 157; IOR L/PJ/5/168, Fortnightly report, 18 July 1947.

  50. Ian Copland, The Princes of India in the Endgame of Empire 1917–1947 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 229–60.

  51. Quoted ibid., p. 257.

  52. See W.A. Wilcox, Pakistan: The Consolidation of a Nation (New York, 1963) on the assimilation of the Pakistani princely states.

  53. For analysis of these princely schemes during the Raj's disintegration see Copland, State, Community and Neighbourhood especially chapters 4 and 5.

  54. Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 104.

  55. Times of India, 5 June 1947.

  56. TOP, vol. 12, p. 125, Governor of Central Provinces and Berar to Mountbatten, 12 July 1947.

  57. USSA 845.00/5–147–845.00/7–3047 Box 6070, Encl. to dispatch dated 19 June by American Consul-General, Bombay.

  58. JP, 1st ser., vol. 2, p. 541, 27 June 1947.

  59. Civil and Military Gazette, 6 May 1947.

  60. Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 93–4.

  61. Civil and Military Gazette 21 June 1947; USSA 845.00/6–647 Box 670 Gordon Minnigerode to US Secretary of State, 6 June 1947. Reactions in Karachi and Sind to the British Plan for the Partition of India.

  62. NMML, Pant Papers, File IV, doc. 96. Enclosure on the Indo-Pakistan Muslim League, 1948.

  63. USSA 845.00/5–147 – 845.00/7–3047 Box 6070, Attlee in conversation with US Ambassador and Sir Paul Patrick in conversation with State Department representatives, 29 May 1947.

  64. Civil and Military Gazette, 5 July 1947.

  Chapter 6: Untangling Two Nations

  1. Penderel Moon, Divide and Quit: An eyewitness account of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 90–1.

  2. CWMG, vol. 88, p. 135, Speech at a prayer meeting, 11 June 1947.

  3. Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 90–1.

  4. IOR L/PJ/5/140 Hydari to Mountbatten, 1 Aug. 1947.

  5. TOP, vol. 11, p. 26. Jenkins to Mountbatten, 31 May 1947.

  6. Ibid., p. 136. Jenkins to Mountbatten 5 June 1947.

  7. Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 114.

  8. TOP, vol. XI, pp. 561–3, Nehru to Mountbatten, 22 June 1947; JP, 1st ser., vol. 2, p. 829, Mountbatten to Jenkins, 24 June 1947.

  9. Ibid., p. 51, 10 June 1947.

  10. JP, 1st ser., vol. 1, p. 903. A.A. Quddoosi to Jinnah, 22 May 1947.

  11. CWMG, vol. 88, p. 113, Speech 11 June 1947.

  12. Sir Muhammad Zafrullah Khan's recollections republished in Ahmad Salim, ed., Lahore, 1947 (Delhi: tara-india research press, 2006), pp. 232–4.

  13. IOR R/3/1/157, Radcliffe to Bengal Boundary Commission, 17 July 1947; Dawn, 19 July 1947; Joya Chatterji,‘The Making of a Borderline’, in I. Talbot and G. Singh, eds, Region and Partition: Bengal, Punjab and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Oxford and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 172.

  14. IOR R/3/1/157.

  15. IOR R/3/1/157, Appeal forwarded to Mountbatten, 23 June 1947; Dawn, 17 July 1947.

  16. IOR R/3/1/157, Maharaja of Patiala to Mountbatten, 7 Aug. 1947.

  17. IOR R/3/1/157, on some aspects of untouchable/scheduled caste politics at Partition see R.S. Rawat, ‘Partition Politics and Achhut Identity: A Study of the Scheduled Castes Federation, and Dalit Politics in UP, 1946–8’, in S. Kaul, ed., The Partitions of Memory: The Afterlife of the Division of India (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), pp. 111–39.

  18. AICC, G 11 (1946–8), undated letter from Lahore, c. mid–1947.

  19. Dawn, 17 July 1947.

  20. TOP, vol. 12, p. 148.

  21. Diary of Fikr Taunsvi, 11 Aug. 1947 reproduced in Salim, ed., Lahore, 1947, p. 19.

  22. The authorities in Lahore prohibited noises made by all these items in May 1947.

  23. Diary of Fikr Taunsvi, 11 Aug. 1947 reproduced in Salim ed. Lahore, 1947, pp. 14–15.

  24. Andrew Whitehead, Oral Archive: India: A People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000); Shanti Seghal interviewed by Anuradha Awasthi in Delhi, 1 Feb. 1947.

  25. IOR Mss Eur. C290; unpublished manuscript of William Chaning Pearce.r />
  26. USSA 845.00/8–147–845.00/12–3147 Box 6071, 13 Aug. 1947.

  27. Moon, Divide and Quit, p. 115.

  28. L. Carter, ed. Mountbatten's Report on the last Viceroyalty, 22 March to 15 August 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2003), p. 79.

  29. Epstein Papers (Private Collection), Col. G.S.N Hughes to Mr Bowen, 24 June 1947.

  30. Epstein Papers (Private Collection) Anthony Epstein to family, 14 Oct. 1947.

  31. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, interviewed in Delhi, 15 March 1997.

  32. Indian Emergency Committee Meeting Minutes, 6–7 Sept. 1947, reprinted in H.M. Patel, Rites of Passage: A Civil Servant Remembers (New Delhi: Vedam, 2005), pp. 280, 284; Civil and Military Gazette, 29 May 1947.

  33. Letter from a British police officer quoted in Francis Tuker, While Memory Serves (London: Cassell, 1950), pp. 486–7.

  34. IOR, Mss Eur. C290, Unpublished memoirs of C. Pearce (UP Police, 1945–7), c. 1977.

  35. USSA 845.00/8–147–845.00/12–3147, Box 6071, Phillips Talbot to Institute of Current World Affairs on the Indian political situation, 22 July 1947. Talbot would later become a diplomat and specialist on South Asian affairs.

  36. JP, 1st ser., vol. 3, pp. 668–9. Recommendations of the Muslim members of the Health Committee.

  37. TOP, vol. 11, pp. 682–5. USSA 845.00/5–147–845.00/7–3047 Box 6070. Charles Thomson, Consul in Calcutta, 30 June 1947.

  38. JP, 1st ser., vol. 4, p. 126. ‘Agha’ to Fatima Jinnah, 1 Aug. 1947. Attia Hosain's novel, Sunlight on a Broken Column (London: Chatto and Windus, 1961) also vividly depicts the indecision among Muslim families confronting the prospect of moving to Pakistan.

  39. JP, vol. 2, p. 521. S. M. Hasan to Jinnah, 26 June 1947.

  40. Manzoor Alam Quraishi, Indian Administration, Pre and Post Independence: Memoirs of an ICS (Delhi: BR Publishing, 1985), p. 155.

  41. Anwar Ahmed Hanafi interviewed by Patrick French, Liberty or Death: India's journey to Independence and division (London: HarperCollins, 1997), p. 315.

  42. Dawn, 11 Aug. 1947, cited in Tan Tai Yong and G. Kudaisya, The Aftermath of Partition in South Asia (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 48.

  43. Intizar Husain interviewed in Alok Bhalla, Partition Dialogues: Memories of a Lost Home (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 105.

  44. Carter, ed., Mountbatten's report on the last Viceroyalty, p. 216.

  45. TOP, vol. 11, p. 404.

  46. TOP, vol. 7, p. 169. Note on Meeting of Cabinet Delegation, 8 April 1946.

  47. Hindustan Times, 20 June 1947.

  48. W.C. Smith, Modern Islam in India (London: Victor Gollancz, 1946), p. 266; Intizar Husain interviewed in Bhalla, Partition Dialogues, p. 94.

  49. TOP, vol. 11, pp. 193–4; USSA 845.00/8–147 – 845.00/12–3147, Box 6071, Phillips Talbot to Institute of Current World Affairs on the Indian political situation, 22 July 1947.

  50. Ravinder Kaur, ‘Planning Urban Chaos: State and Refugees in Post-partition Delhi’, in E. Hust and M. Mann, eds, Urbanization and Governance in India (New Delhi: Manohar, 2005), p. 236.

  51. M. Bourke-White, Halfway to Freedom: A report on the new India (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1949), pp. 22–3.

  52. JP, 1st ser., vol. 3, p. 343. Nawab of Bhopal to Jinnah, 12 July 1947.

  53. Quoted in M. Hasan, ‘Memories of a Fragmented Nation’, in S. Settar and I. Gupta, eds, Pangs of Partition (New Delhi: Manohar, 2002), vol. 2, p. 182.

  54. Civil and Military Gazette, 15 Aug. 1947; USSA 845.00/8–147 – 845.00/12–3147 Box 6071, Note by American Consul, Calcutta 13 Aug. 1947.

  55. TOP, vol. 12, p. 190.

  56. IOR L/PJ/5/140, Hydari to Mountbatten, 1 Aug. 1947.

  57. Satish Gujral in Hasan, ed., ‘Memories of a Fragmented Nation’, pp. 47–8.

  58. Quoted ibid., p. 182.

  59. Bhisham Sahni, Tamas (New Delhi: Penguin edn, 2001), pp. 127–8

  60. Report of the Punjab Boundary Commission (Govt of India, 1947), p. 10.

  61. The Journey to Pakistan; A documentation on refugees of 1947 (Islamabad: Govt of Pakistan, 1993), p. 150.

  62. Moon, Divide and Quit: An eye-witness account of the Partition of India (Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998) p. 186.

  63. M. Hasan, Legacy of a Divided Nation: India's Muslims Since Independence (London and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 128.

  64. Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (London: Hurst, 2000), p. 236.

  65. Alan Campbell-Johnson, Mission with Mountbatten (London: Robert Hale, 1951), p. 167.

  66. Broadcast speech of Jinnah on 2 Sept. 1947, in The Journey to Pakistan: A Documentation on Refugees of 1947 (Islamabad: Govt of Pakistan, 1993), p. 241.

  67. Shail Mayaram, ‘Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in Mewat’, in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds, Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 149.

  Chapter 7: Blood on the Tracks

  1. L. Carter, ed., Mountbatten's Report on the Last Viceroyalty: 22 March–15 August 1947 (New Delhi: Manohar, 2003), p. 266.

  2. Ibid., p. 191.

  3. For a convincing account of the severe limitations of this force see Robin Jeffrey, ‘The Punjab Boundary Force and the Problem of Order, August 1947’, Modern Asian Studies, 8.4 (1974), pp. 491–520. The Boundary Force had an operational existence of 32 days, covered only the twelve most ‘disturbed’ districts of Punjab and included, at its peak, up to 25,000 men, which meant that ‘At its greatest strength, the Boundary Force was in a position to allot four men to every three villages or fewer than two men to a square mile; to the population [of these districts], it stood in a ratio of 1:630’, p. 500.

  4. Moon, Divide and Quit: An eye witness account of the Partition of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), p. 95.

  5. Official state-sponsored accounts have shown a resilient amnesia and ‘massacres’ comprise a subsidiary appendix tacked on to the greater story of the freedom struggle. There are immense difficulties in disentangling the slivers of memory, anecdotes and fictional accounts preserved by survivors and witnesses. Mapping what took place and placing it in an explanatory framework is no easy task. The jigsaw puzzle of regional and district-level snapshots is still being painstakingly pieced together by historians who are starting to disaggregate the sweeping generalisations and stock imagery of 1947, and realising through sifting through oral history interviews, government archives, personal letters and newspapers that the violence had very particular characteristics; riots and pogroms varied in their intensity, in their precise relationship to the handiwork of local politicians, and in the havoc that they unleashed. For works which specifically address violence in Punjab at the time of Partition see Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence: Voices from the Partition of India (London: Hurst, 2000); Ian Talbot, Freedom's Cry. The Popular Dimension in the Pakistan Movement and the Partition of the Subcontinent (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1999); Paul Brass, ‘The Partition of India and Retributive Genocide in the Punjab, 1946–7’, Journal of Genocide Research, 5.1 (2003); Pippa Virdee, ‘Partition and Locality: Studies of the Impact of Partition and its Aftermath in the Punjab region 1947–61’ (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Coventry University, 2004); Ian Talbot, Divided Cities: Partition and its Aftermath in Lahore and Amritsar (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007); Ayesha Jalal, ‘Nation, Reason and Religion: The Punjab's Role in the Partition of India’, Economic and Political Weekly, 8 Aug. 1998; Anders Bjørn Hansen, Partition and Genocide: Manifestation of Violence in Punjab, 1937–1947 (Delhi, 2002); Swarna Aiyar, “August Anarchy”: The Partition Massacres in Punjab, 1947’, in D.A. Low and H. Brasted eds, Freedom, Trauma, Continuities: Northern India and Independence (Delhi: Sage, 1998); Ian Copland, ‘The Master and the Maharajas: The Sikh Princes and the East Punjab Massacres of 1947’, Modern Asian Studies, 36. 3 (2002); Indivar Kamtekar, ‘The M
ilitary Ingredient of Communal Violence in Punjab, 1947’, Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, 56 (1995), pp. 568–72.

  6. Moon, Divide and Quit, pp. 134–5.

  7. Ishtiaq Ahmed, ‘Forced Migration and Ethnic Cleansing in Lahore in 1947: Some First Person Accounts’, in I. Talbot and Shinder Thandi, eds, People on the Move: Punjabi Colonial and Post Colonial Migration (Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 132–4.

  8. Urvashi Butalia, The Other Side of Silence, p. 237.

  9. Whitehead, Oral Archive: India: A People Partitioned (London: School of Oriental African Studies, 1997, 2000); Harcharan Singh Nirman interviewed in Chandigarh, 17 March 1997.

  10. Ibid., Ram Dev interviewed in Chandigarh, 17 March 1947.

  11. Bhisham Sahni, Tamas (Delhi: Penguin, 2001), p. 229.

  12. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Krishna Baldev Vaid interviewed in Delhi, 12 Jan. 1997.

  13. Jon Stallworthy, Louis MacNeice (London: Faber and Faber, 1995), pp. 357–8.

  14. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Mrs Ashoka Gupta interviewed in Calcutta, 24 April 1997.

  15. Extract from interview with Taran in Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, pp. 46–7.

  16. Whitehead, India: A People Partitioned; Kuldip Nayar interviewed in Delhi 14 Aug. 1996; Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, p. 32.

  17. Menon and Bhasin, Borders and Boundaries, p. 76.

  18. Official figures ibid., p. 70. Urvashi Butalia cites 75,000 abductions in The Other Side of Silence, p. 3. In 1948, Mridula Sarabhai, who organised the Indian recovery operation, believed that the official figure of women abducted in Pakistan – 12,500 – could have been ten times that in reality.

  19. Ian Copland, ‘The Further Shores of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan, 1947’, Past and Present, 160 (1998), pp. 203–39. The violence in Alwar and Bharatpur is also analysed in S. Mayaram, ‘Speech, Silence and the Making of Partition Violence in Mewat'; Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty, eds, Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 128–61.

  20. Copland, ‘The Further Shores of Partition’, pp. 203–39. There are similarities here with events in the princely states of East Punjab, which Ian Copland has also described in ‘The Master and the Maharajas: The Sikh Princes and the East Punjab Massacres of 1947’, Modern Asian Studies, 36. 3 (2002).