“A transfer of population which Gandhiji and other leaders wanted to avoid took place automatically .in the case of the Punjab and the Frontier and S… - J. B. Kripalani

The situation created in the N.W.F.P. and the Punjab had become serious. Riots broke out first in N.W.F.P. and thereafter spread to the whole of the Punjab. On our way to Kashmir (in May 1947) we stopped at Lahore and from there went up to Rawalpindi. We found intense apprehension among the Hindus because the Muslim leaders were openly and boastfully talking of using violence against the Hindus. In the Rawalpindi district, we found widespread destruction. Every Hindu and Sikh public building in that city had been turned into a refugee camp. We saw a house where the children from the village had collected and which had been set on fire. We saw the bones of the little ones. “In a village called Thoa Khalsa, after a prolonged fight between Hindus and Sikhs on one side and Muslims on the other, when all men belonging to the Sikh and Hindu com- munities were killed, seventy-four women and girls and children decided to save their honour by jumping into the well of a house where they had all collected for safety. Led by the wife of the owner of the house, Smt- Lajwanti, all of them jumped into the well after reciting japji. We were shown the well and given photographs showing it full of dead bodies. ““We were informed that when some local leaders ap- proached a highly-placed British official for protection, he said, “Go to Gandhi, he will come to your help.

It is also well-known that in the new map of China other border territories like Nepal, Sikkim, etc., figure. This gives us an idea of the aggressive designs of China. Let us see what the Chinese themselves did in the Korean War. As soon as the U.N. troops, or more correctly the American troops, reached the borders of China, it felt insecure and it immediately joined the Korean War. I do not say that because China conquered Tibet, we should have gone to war with it,... But this does not mean that we should recognize the claim of China on Tibet. We must know that it is an act of aggression against a foreign nation.

Recently we have entered into a treaty with China. I feel that China, after it had gone Communist, committed an act of aggression against Tibet. The plea is that China had the ancient right of suzerainty. This right was out of date, old and antiquated. It was never exercised in fact. It had lapsed by the flux of time. Even if it had not lapsed, it is not right in these days of democracy by which our Communist friends swear, by which the Chinese swear, to talk of this ancient suzerainty and exercise it in a new form in a country which had and has nothing to do with China.