Tribune: 8-8-47. Mahatma Gandhi advised Congressmen who met him at the residence of Mrs. Rameshwari Nehru at Lahore on 6-8-47 that they should die wi… - Gurbachan Singh Talib

Attacks on Sikhs found anywhere became a feature of the Muslim campaign in Amritsar. Any Sikh found anywhere on the road was attacked and killed. A large number of Sikhs coming from the villages around Amritsar, and many pilgrims coming from outside to visit Darbar Sahib were stabbed by Muslim parties lying in ambush.

All this was done in village after village after the Muslims had given assurances of safety on the Koran to Hindus. Hindu women were molested and abducted. Altogether 50 villages in this tehsil were looted with arson, murder and abduction of women. Ears, noses and breasts of women were cut off, and they were raped in the presence of their husbands, brothers, fathers and sons. Such Hindus as approached Muslims with messages of peace were brutally and cynically murdered by these League gangs. Forcible conversions of Hindus occurred on a large scale. It is estimated that Hindus were wiped out in this district over an area of about 500 square miles.

Of course, when the Muslim Leaguers did actually come to establish a Government of their own on August 15, 1947, they drove the non-Muslim population out of their country with scant ceremony-by a campaign of pillage, murder, rape and arson. This method effected the exchange desired much quicker and in a more thorough way than could be done by any human legislation. As a matter of fact, the driving out of minorities had begun as early as November, 1946 with Noakhali, when the whole of Northern India was flooded with destitutes begging for a morsel or a piece of cloth to cover their shivering bodies. Later this was effected in December, 1946 and January, 1947 in the Hazara District of the N.-W. Frontier Province, when Sikhs and Hindus had to flee for dear life into the Punjab. And then came March, 1947 with its horrors. August, 1947 let loose a vast flood of persecution of millions. So, the Muslim scheme was being translated into historic fact to the letter.