Daily Times

On August 11, 1947, Jinnah made a speech in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly that declared equal rights for all Pakistani citizens irrespective of their religion or ethnicity. It was a major rupture with his statements since 1940. The refrain during those seven years had been the impossibility of Muslims and Hindus being part of one nation and one state. Now, on August 11, 1947, all that was possible in Pakistan as well as in India. A government of Muslims would automatically be fair because democracy was in their blood. Equally, he advised those Muslims who stayed behind in India to become loyal Indian citizens and he expected the Indian government (under Congress) to be fair and protective towards them. During my research on the partition of Punjab I found, to my very great surprise, that even some Hindus continued to believe in Jinnah’s secular credentials and some of them wanted to stay on and serve in Pakistan. However, soon after August 14, 1947, one such Hindu admirer of Jinnah, a leading Lahore economist Prof Brij Narain, was mercilessly killed by a mob that raided his home on Nicholson Road. He pleaded in vain that he was a supporter of Jinnah and Pakistan (he wrote several articles proving that Pakistan would be economically viable). After that incident, few if any Hindus or Sikhs remained in Lahore or other parts of Pakistani Punjab. In East Punjab every Muslim became a legitimate target for revenge-seeking Sikh jathas and RSS cadres. To the credit of Gandhi and Nehru, they did not let such ethnic cleansing as the Punjabis carried out affect the provinces under their influence; most of the Muslims who migrated to Pakistan did it as a free choice though attacks on them also took place in some places and they left for Pakistan to save their lives.
The truth is that in Punjab, nexuses of criminals, police and other administrative staff at the lower levels especially, politicians and ex-servicemen preyed upon hapless men, women and children. Looting was the prime object though revenge and ideology were the two motivating factors. Muslim League and Congress cadres took part in violent attacks on innocent people (in Jullundur, I show that Congress workers took part in attacks on Muslims). The only political people who retained their humanity were the Communists and the Khaksars. In Amritsar and Lahore the Communists saved many lives and in Rawalpindi the Khaksars did the same. More importantly, individually many Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs went out of the way to save people from the so-called enemy community. All this is amply documented in my book, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed. Jinnah believed that once Pakistan came into being and the reins of power were in his hands, things would normalise. According to Justice Muhammad Munir, when he wrote to him that Muslims have been aggressors in the attacks on Sikh-Hindu villages in Rawalpindi rural areas in early March 1947, Jinnah told him, “Let me get into the saddle and you will not hear any nonsense of the kind” (From Jinnah to Zia). A few weeks later he met Sikh leaders in Delhi. The meeting was arranged by Viceroy Mountbatten with a view to enabling the Muslim League and Sikh leaders’ agreement to keep their province united. Jinnah urged the Sikhs whom he met on May 14-16, 1947, to support his demand that India should be partitioned. In return he would guarantee them all the safeguards they wanted in Pakistan. He told them to write down all their preconditions, which he would sign blindfolded. The Sikh leaders were sceptical since at the time of the massacre in the Rawalpindi, Attock and Jhelum villages in early March, no Muslim League leader had condemned those attacks. Even Jinnah had kept quiet publicly. Consequently Sikh spokesman Hardit Singh Malik remarked, “Mr Jinnah, you are being very generous. But, supposing, God forbid, you are no longer there when the time comes to implement your promises?” His reply was, “My friend, my word in Pakistan will be like the word of God. No one will go back on it” (The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed).
I am quite convinced Jinnah would be completely bewildered if he were to come back and see for himself the forces that now rule the roost in Pakistan. According to Colonel (retd) Amjad Hussain Syed, with Jinnah’s death his progressive vision also died. More than a million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs died and 14 to 18 million of them crossed the border to create Pakistan. In Punjab alone 10 million had to cross the border to save their lives. There is anecdotal evidence that when Jinnah saw with his own eyes the havoc that had been wreaked on the Punjabi Muslims he was profoundly shaken. From the evidence I could collect about Jinnah’s direct experience of Punjab, it was on November 6, 1947 that he visited the Walton Refugee and Relief Camp. He and the Punjab Refugees and Rehabilitation Minister Mian Iftikharuddin later flew in a small plane over the camp and the vast tract eastwards towards the Indian border. Jinnah reportedly put his hand to his head and said, “What have I done?” I heard this story a long time ago but some months earlier I wrote from Stockholm to my dear friend Dr Hassan Amir Shah to talk to veteran trade union leader and socialist, Tahira Mazhar Ali Khan (daughter of Sir Sikander), to confirm if that actually happened. Again, before writing this article I checked with her. On both occasions she confirmed that those were the words that Jinnah chose to express his feelings about the bleeding Punjab of 1947.

(To be continued)

The writer is a visiting professor, LUMS, Pakistan, professor emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University, and honorary senior fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. His latest publications include the Winner of the Best Non-Fiction Book award at the Karachi Literature Festival, The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed, Oxford, 2012; and Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Oxford, 2013. He can be reached at:billumian@gmail.com