65 years later: A wounded state

People from both sides behaved like beasts,” says Sarjit Singh Chowdhary, a retired brigadier, offering an overview of events in Punjab during the year India was partitioned, Mahir Ali, of the Khaleej Times, reports.
His testimony is among the many first-person accounts that comprise the core of Ishtiaq Ahmed’s meticulously researched thesis on the direst events of 1947, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed. An invaluable history of events in the Punjab during that decisive year, it serves as an overarching cautionary tale.
A number of themes emerge from its pages as the circumstances of 65 years ago are graphically resurrected in the words of those who experienced them first-hand. Among the crucial incidents that preceded the bloodbath was Master Tara Singh’s provocative waving of the kirpan outside the Punjab Assembly in Lahore following the resignation of the Unionist-led Khizr ministry, in the wake of a Muslim League agitation.
Here, one of the numerous counterfactuals of that period rears its head. The League, hitherto not particularly influential in provincial affairs, won the largest number of seats in the 1946 elections but fell short of a majority. A coalition with the Congress was within the realm of possibility, but the largest nationalist party’s hierarchy decided against it. On the one hand, its demurral is perfectly understandable. On the other, it is hard not to wonder whether such an arrangement might not have saved lives.
Initial instances of communal strife involved attacks by Muslim mobs on Sikhs in villages near Rawalpindi in March 1947, as well as clashes in the garrison town itself. There was turmoil in Lahore during the same period. It was still unclear at that point whether a Muslim-majority state called Pakistan would emerge.
Many Sikhs and Hindus believed, for instance, that if a divide occurred, Lahore would be a part of India; after all, much of the city’s property belonged to non-Muslims, and it hosted crucial Sikh shrines. At the same time, a few Muslims in Amritsar and Jullundhur expected those cities to be assigned to a putative Pakistan, notwithstanding their non-Muslim majorities. These seemingly unrealistic notions were prodded on by political leaders.
It is useful to remember, though, that in those days reality was a rapidly morphing construct. As Ahmed points out, the Radcliffe boundaries — delineated by an Englishman who had arrived in India for the first time just a few weeks earlier — were officially announced a couple of days after partition. The mid-August cut-off point was not public knowledge until Lord Mountbatten’s June 3 announcement.
The haste with which the British withdrew from the subcontinent has often been cited as a leading cause of the gory disarray that followed. The initial deadline for the transfer of power was June 1948. Whether the Punjab situation would have been ameliorated by a longer deadline and an earlier demarcation of the new boundary is a moot point, although it’s possible a more orderly transition would have facilitated a less rancorous divide.
Another question the book raises is whether a division of Punjab was an inevitable consequence along communal lines. The Muslim League was keen to claim the province as a whole, and entered into negotiations with the Sikh leadership. The Sikhs were, understandably, wary of Jinnah’s assurances of virtual autonomy.
Majority of witnesses, including those who lost most of their families in the Punjab holocaust, testify to a broad communal harmony in the run-up to 1947. The extent to which class resentment might have contributed to the conflict is insufficiently explored in the testimonies.
It is universally accepted that innocents were subjected to the vilest atrocities, but it’s vital to remember that they were perpetrated by Sikhs, Muslims and Hindus alike — with reports or experiences of cruelty elsewhere commonly cited as a provocation. It is perhaps even more important to note the innumerable instances of folks from all backgrounds keeping their heads when all about them were losing theirs, and not letting the vitriol that was seeping through the land of the five rivers poison their hearts. Many survivors acknowledge that they owe their lives to awe-inspiring acts of kindness by strangers belonging to supposedly rival communities.
In some cases, political affiliations clearly played a role: for instance, nationalist Muslims resistant to the clarion call for a separate homeland and communists on both sides of the deepening divide often did what they could to ameliorate the consequences of the communal frenzy that climaxed in the weeks following freedom at midnight. The appearances of the resolutely secular Jawaharlal Nehru are often cited as a crucial factor in quelling or pre-empting outbreaks of violence. By the same token, the instigative acts and rhetoric of the Muslim League National Guard, the RSS and the Akalis frequently figure as retrograde influences.
Could anything short of a renunciation of the partition project have prevented the bloodbath? Eventually, well-armed military escorts protected many a refugee convoy. It should, of course, never have come to that. Although the tragedy lies 65 years in the past, it has vitiated relations between India and Pakistan ever since and continues to undermine the powerful logic of harmonious coexistence. Ishtiaq Ahmed’s probingly piteous account of how the Punjab suddenly went pear-shaped in 1947 ought to serve as prescribed reading particularly for those who continue to pursue the pathetic notion that the carnage was either inevitable or necessary.