So, from the 5th March, 1947 onwards the constitutional game was up, and for the Hindus and Sikhs it became a struggle for sheer life against a fierce and well-planned Muslim onslaught-well-planned in that the Muslim League had a fighting corps (the Muslim League National Guard), ample stores of weapons, both sharp-edged and fire-arms, and a plan of attacks in which with police and official help the Muslims were to be encouraged and covered against risk, while Hindu and Sikh retaliation, if it ever were planned, was to be stifled. (70)
Indian writer (1911–1986)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
Nine Hindus and Sikhs were murdered treacherously by Muslims in Lal Kurti Mohalla, after being decoyed into entering the Muslim Zone for peace negotiations. This was not a solitary instance of such murder done by treachery, as similar things occurred in other places too, both in March and in the post partition period.
All these happenings occurred at a time when in India, Mahatma Gandhi undertook his last fast to get better treatment for the Indian Muslims. That was the response in Pakistan to the Mahatma's gesture, and the faithfully carrying out of the Mahatma's instructions by Hindus and Sikhs. Exactly when Delhi was being made safe for Muslims, in Karachi 800 Sikhs were massacred, and all Hindus looted and despoiled, had to move into refugee camps.
Large-scale arson, murder of males, abduction, rape and dishonour of women, brutalities to children, looting, forcible conversions etc. all these features were common to the localities affected. Those attacked were first asked to pay sums of money to pay off the invaders; then followed more demands, and attacks by outsiders.
A peace meeting had to be called in Gujranwala on the 11th July at which Muslim League leaders including Mian Iftikharuddin and the Khan of Mamdot made very glib speeches about the virtue of neighbourliness and communal harmony. But the Muslim audiences knew very well that all Muslim League leaders’ peace appeals, from Mr. Jinnah downwards were meant only to do a formality, to fool the Western world and to lull Hindus and Sikhs into a false sense of security. Behind the scenes these very speech-makers were planning riots and organising and financing arson and murder.
A Sikh was standing at a milk-shop, buying milk. He was stabbed while standing there and killed. A Hindu was going on a bicycle. He was stopped on the road by a group of Muslims, asked to prove whether he was Hindu or Muslim, and on it being ascertained that he was a Hindu, he was put on the road, and his throat cut with slow torture like an animal slaughtered in the Muslim way. (96)
This was broadly the approach of the generality of Muslims though there were also differences of emphases and in exceptional cases even disagreement with the main thesis. Some of them, particularly of Ulema class, sounded a warning that Pakistan might impede the establishment of Dinia by arousing unnecessary resistance among the Hindus; therefore, they stayed away from the Pakistan campaign and some of them even opposed it. They came to be known as “nationalist Muslims.”
A British Officer of the M. E. O. of West Punjab reported (September, 1947) that at a place near Sheikhupura he was called to rescue a Hindu girl, who had been carried away by Muslim National Guards. He found the girl in a hut with 4 of her captors, who had raped and cut off her breasts and were now frying them. He shot the lot.
The victims were given no quarter when beseiged. Places of worship were desecrated, and religious feelings were outraged with fiendish gusto. Shaving of Sikhs, feeding of Hindus and Sikhs on beef, circumcision of Hindus and Sikhs, marrying away young girls and widows of Hindus, and Sikhs to Muslims-these practices were resorted to.
The assailants stopped the arriving train by climbing on to the outer signal and raising it. Then the mob, concealed in Muslim houses along the railway track, fell upon the helpless Hindu and Sikh passengers, and murdered a good number, including women and children before the train could be restarted and brought to Amritsar station. Trains and lorries coining from Jullundur and Pathankot and Narowal were similarly attacked by Muslims of this suburb and Sikhs killed with great brutality. Men, women and children were chased like animals and gored to death with spears. This was the first train-attack made anywhere in this conflict, and this kind of thing was repeated by Muslim Leaguers in many places in the subsequent months.
Pakistan, as has been told above, was originally conceived to comprise only the North-Western areas of the Punjab, Sind, Kashmir, the N.-W. Frontier Province and Baluchistan. But in a later concept of the thing, issued in the form of a revised version of the original scheme, it was devised to comprise, besides the areas originally ear-marked for it, also Assam and Bengal in the East, and Hyderabad and Malabar in the South. In addition to these extensive strongholds of Muslim power in the North-West, in the East and the South, beleaguering non-Muslim India from all strategic points, were also to be several smaller though by no means too small, Muslim pockets, studded all over the country-one in the United Provinces, one in the heart of Rajputana and another still in Bihar. Thus, the Muslims of all India, and not only those of the Muslim majority areas, were to have independent countries of their own, parcelling out India into so many new Muslim-dominated States.