The Great Partition Read online

  THE GREAT PARTITION

  Yasmin Khan was born in London and educated at St Peter's College and St Antony's College, Oxford. She has familial links to both India and Pakistan, and has lived in Delhi as well as having travelled widely on the subcontinent. Previously a history lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, she currently holds a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellowship and teaches politics in the Faculty of History and Social Sciences at Royal Holloway, University of London. She has contributed to a global strategic consultancy on Indian and Pakistani political developments, and was consultant editor on ‘India Britain 2020’, a report commissioned by the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office about the future of bilateral relations in 2005.

  THE GREAT PARTITION

  THE MAKING OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN

  YASMIN KHAN

  YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS

  NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

  Copyright © 2007 Yale University

  First printed in paperback 2008

  All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

  For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:

  U.S. Office: http://[email protected] yalebooks.com

  Europe Office: [email protected] www.yaleup.co.uk

  Set in Minion by J&L Composition, Filey, North Yorkshire

  Printed in the Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Khan, Yasmin, 1977–

  The great Partition: the making of India and Pakistan/Yasmin Khan.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978–0–300–12078–3 (alk. paper)

  1. India—History—Partition, 1947. 2. Nationalism—India—History.

  3. Nationalism—Pakistan—History. I. Title.

  DS480.842.K49 2007

  954.04'2—dc22

  2007006713

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978–0–300–14333–1 (pbk)

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Javed Khan, in memory

  Contents

  Cover

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  List of Illustrations

  List of Maps

  Acknowledgements

  List of Abbreviations

  Glossary

  Timeline of Major Events, 1945–1950

  Introduction: The Plan

  1 In the Shadow of War

  2 Changing Regime

  3 The Unravelling Raj

  4 The Collapse of Trust

  5 From Breakdown to Breakdown

  6 Untangling Two Nations

  7 Blood on the Tracks

  8 Leprous Daybreak

  9 Bitter Legacies

  10 Divided Families

  Epilogue

  Notes

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  Illustrations

  1. Communist delegates marching during the Punjab Provincial Delegates Conference, 1945 © Sunil Janah, 1945, 2007. From the web archive at members.aol.com/sjanah (email: [email protected]).

  2. Royal Indian Navy mutineers, Bombay, 1946 © Nehru Memorial Museum and Library.

  3. Muslim League leader Mohammed Ali Jinnah holding a press conference, Bombay, January 1946. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

  4. People in Bombay lining up to vote in the general elections, 1946 © Sunil Janah, 1946, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  5. A co-educational zoology class at Aligarh Muslim University, May 1946. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

  6. Lord Pethick-Lawrence, member of the British Cabinet Mission delegation, looking over papers, 1946 © NMML.

  7. A peace procession after the riots in Calcutta, 1946 © Sunil Janah, 1946, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  8. Villagers in boats fleeing under cover of darkness from their burning villages during riots in Noakhali, an eastern district of undivided Bengal, 1946–7 © Sunil Janah, 1947, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  9. Crowds look on during Gandhi's visit to encourage Hindu–Muslim unity in Noakhali © NMML.

  10. Muslims and Hindus attempt to promote peace by jointly flying the flags of the Muslim League and the Indian National Congress, Calcutta, 1946 © Sunil Janah, 1946, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  11. Nehru and Gandhi with refugees from West Pakistan at Haridwar, India, 1947 © NMML.

  12. Nehru votes for Partition at the Congress Working Committee Meeting, 1947 © NMML.

  13. Meeting of the Indian leaders with Mountbatten at which the plan to partition the subcontinent was agreed, Delhi, 2 June 1947 © NMML.

  14. ‘A Happy Ending Indeed!’, cartoon from Hitavada, 15 August 1947 © NMML.

  15. The departure of British troops, 1947 © NMML.

  16. Muslim refugees on the roof of a train near New Delhi, 19 September 1947 © Associated Press/PA Photos.

  17. ‘Battles Ahead’, cartoon from the National Herald, 15 August 1957 © NMML.

  18. Refugees at a shelter near the border between West Bengal and the newly created East Pakistan, 1947 © Sunil Janah, 1947, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  19. Men near the Indo-Pakistani border in Punjab placing bodies in a mass grave using a bulldozer, October 1947. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

  20. Nehru addressing the crowds the day after Independence Day 1947, Delhi © NMML.

  21. Lady Mountbatten touring riot devastation at Multan, Punjab © NMML.

  22. News of Gandhi's assassination reaches Calcutta, 1948 © Sunil Janah, 1948, 2007 ([email protected], members.aol.com/sjanah).

  23. Nehru at a refugee township in Ludhiana, Punjab, 1949 © NMML.

  24. Jinnah's sister Fatima Jinnah surrounded by women during their weekly Saturday meeting making clothes for refugees at the Government House, Karachi, December 1947. Photograph by Margaret Bourke-White © Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images.

  25. Refugee children at Kurukshetra camp with Nehru and Lady Mountbatten February, 1949 © NMML.

  Maps

  1 India before Partition

  2 India and Pakistan after Partition

  3 The Radcliffe Line in Punjab

  4 The Radcliffe Line in Bengal

  Acknowledgements

  I was born in London two generations after the events described in this book. Nonetheless people sometimes ask about my own ‘Partition story’. Both my grandfathers were bit-players in the story of Partition as it unfolded in the subcontinent and both had their own lives profoundly shaped by the ending of the British empire. One was stationed as a British officer in an Indian Army tank regiment. He stayed in the subcontinent during the postcolonial transition and saw at first hand, from a base in Punjab, the creation of the two new states of India and Pakistan. At the same time, not far away, my other grandfather who was born in North India was supporting the Muslim League. He campaigned as a candidate in the 1946 provincial elections and moved part of his family to Pakistan after the new state was created.

  Neither of them, I suspect, would have agreed very much, if at all, with my interpretation of events here. Their walk-on parts in the Partition story, though, and the stories that grew up around them, encouraged my interest in history, and provoked my curiosity about the origins of modern India and Pakistan – two states which ar
e supposedly so different and yet have such recently intertwined roots. I am very grateful to friends and family in India, Pakistan and Britain who lived through the Partition of 1947 and who shared their thoughts with me. The subtext to this book is a will for peaceful rapprochement in South Asia and I very much hope it will be read in this light.

  My debts have been building up for many years now. I was fortunate to start studying history under the careful eye of Lawrence Goldman at St Peter's College, Oxford. Judith Brown and Ian Talbot both guided this work through earlier incarnations and have been consistently generous since. At my way stations over the past decade – Oxford University, the University of Edinburgh and Royal Holloway, University of London – my thanks to: Sarah Ansari, Henry Mayr-Harting, Henrietta Leyser, Peter Carey, Roger and Patricia Jeffery, Anna-Maria Misra, Francis Robinson, Crispin Bates, Imre Bangha, David Washbrook and John Darwin. Alpa Shah is both friend and honest critic and helped improve the manuscript. Markus Daechsel, likewise, and his own book has left an imprint on my thinking about 1947. Heather McCallum at Yale has been a source of encouragement and constructive ideas and my thanks to Yale for the care with which the book has been produced.

  The National History Center seminar on the subject of decolonisation held in Washington DC in the summer of 2006 enabled me to see things from new angles; I am grateful to Wm Roger Louis, Pillarisetti Sudhir and the other conveners and participants. Colleagues in the politics department at Royal Holloway have been entirely supportive. Lance Brennan and Professor Anthony Epstein both generously shared previously unpublished documents and Sunil Janah's photographs add much to the text. Benjamin Zachariah, Shabnum Tejani, Andrew Whitehead, William Gould and Kaushik Bhaumik provided comments and discussion at critical moments. My research would not have been possible without the support of the Arts and Humanities Research Council and the British Academy which have sustained me throughout my graduate years and beyond. Countless expert librarians and archivists made research a more pleasurable experience; particular thanks to Teen Murti Bhavan, Delhi, and the Indian Institute, Oxford.

  For hospitality and companionship in Karachi, Lahore, Delhi, Lucknow, Oxford, Edinburgh and London, my thanks to: Jan-Peter Hartung, the Wright family, Ram Advani, Dr and Begum Siddiqui, Umbreen Daechsel, Seema Ansari and family, Pippa Virdee, Alexander Morrison, Timothy Phillips, Anthony Bale, Orlanda Ruthven, Rebecca Loncraine, Saleema Waraich, Swati Roy, Naomi Foxwood, Blanche Rugginz, Amy Longrigg, Henry Longbottom, and Melody and Nat Hansen. Most important of all, my mother, Finola Khan, and brother, Jamie Khan. And, at last, I can finally record my gratitude to Ben Wright – for everything else.

  Although I have tried to acknowledge sources faithfully, every chapter bears the hallmark of a broader debate among numerous researchers and academics. This may be a starting point for further reading about 1947: suggestions for this are provided in the bibliography, particularly on the experience of Partition in Bengal which deserves a volume of its own. Errors of fact and omission are, needless to say, my own.

  Abbreviations

  AICC All India Congress Committee

  AIHM All India Hindu Mahasabha

  CPI Communist Party of India

  CWMG The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Government of India, 1958–)

  FNR Fortnightly Reports

  ICS Indian Civil Service

  INA Indian National Army

  IOR India Office Records

  JP Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah Papers, ed. Z.H. Zaidi (Islamabad: National Archives of Pakistan, 1993–)

  NAI National Archives of India, New Delhi

  NMML Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi

  NWFP North West Frontier Province

  R&R Relief and Rehabilitation

  RSS Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh

  SPC Sardar Patel's Correspondence, 1945–50, ed. D. Das (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1971)

  SWGBP Selected Works of Govind Ballabh Pant, ed. B.R. Nanda (New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993–)

  SWJN Selected works of Jawaharlal Nehru, ed. S. Gopal, series 1 (New Delhi: Orient Longman, 1972–1982), series 2 (New Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund; distributed by Oxford University Press, 1984–)

  TOP Constitutional Relations between Britain and India. The Transfer of Power, 1942–7 ed. Nicholas Mansergh and E.W.R. Lumby (London: H.M. Stationery Office, 1970–83)

  UP United Provinces. The state was renamed Uttar Pradesh (literally ‘Northern Province’) in 1950

  UPSA Uttar Pradesh State Archives, Lucknow

  USSA United States State Department Archives, Washington DC

  Glossary

  ahimsa non-violence; policy of non-violence used by Gandhi

  akhara gymnasium; club

  anna small unit of Indian money

  azadi freedom

  Bakr-Id Muslim festival during which animals are sacrificed

  bania shopkeeper; grocer

  bhadralok Indian elite, especially in Bengal

  bustees, bastis shanty towns

  charpoi bed or seat made from wood and rope

  crore ten million

  dalit literally, oppressed; untouchable, outcaste

  fatwa notification of a decision of Muslim law; decree; verdict

  ghat river bank; cremation site

  goonda criminal, thug

  harijan literally, children of God; untouchable, outcaste

  hartal strike or protest, specifically, shutting the shops in a market

  Holi Hindu spring festival during which coloured water or coloured powder is splashed on friends, family or passers-by

  Jai Hind Victory to India

  jatha organised group, gang or band

  kafan funeral shroud

  kafila caravan or foot column

  Kalma Islamic recitation

  khadi homespun cloth

  kisan cultivator, farmer

  lakh one hundred thousand

  lathi a staff or club

  maulana title of respect for a Muslim learned man

  maulvi a man learned in Muslim law; a teacher, especially of Arabic or Persian

  mela fair or festival

  mohalla quarter of a town; ward

  Muhajir term used to describe a Partition migrant from North India to Pakistan; literally, the companions of the Prophet Muhammad who fled from Mecca to Medina

  Pakistan Zindabad Long Live Pakistan

  panchayats village councils

  pir descendant and trustee of Sufi shrine

  qasbah town

  raj literally, rule; Raj is also used to describe the British empire in India

  sabha organisation

  sadhu Hindu holy man, an ascetic

  satyagraha literally, truth-force; Gandhian philosophy and practice of non-violent resistance

  shariat law of Islam

  swadeshi self-sufficiency; anti-colonial movement

  swaraj sovereignty, self-rule

  zamindar; zamindari landholder; system of landholding in India

  Timeline of Major Events, 1945–1950

  1945

  7 May End of the Second World War in Europe

  14–15 June Congress Working Committee released from jail

  5 July General Election held in Britain

  25 June–14 July First Simla conference fails to form an executive assembly

  26 July Labour landslide victory in British elections

  21 August Viceroy Wavell announces Indian elections to be held in the winter

  5 November Indian National Army trials start

  Mid-December Polling for the Central and Legislative Assembly elections begins

  Late December Results of elections to Central Legislative Assembly announced

  1946

  11 January Muslim League celebrate ‘Victory Day’

  18–23 February Royal Indian Navy mutiny

  19 February Secretary of State for India announces Cabinet Mission
will visit India

  22 February Communist Party of India calls for a general strike

  25 March Cabinet Mission arrives in New Delhi

  28 March Governors report results of the provincial elections

  April Formation of provincial ministries

  3–17 April Meetings between Indian leaders and the Cabinet Mission

  7–9 April Meeting of League legislators in New Delhi

  5–12 May Cabinet Mission convenes unsuccessful tripartite meeting in Simla

  16 May Cabinet Mission puts forward its own federal solution in a statement; broadcast on radio to Indian people

  26 June Negotiations over an interim government fail

  29 June Cabinet Mission leaves India

  8 August Viceroy invites Congress to proceed in an interim government without the League's participation

  16–18 August The League's ‘Direct Action Day’ ends in violence in Calcutta

  24 August Viceroy broadcasts on the radio regarding formation of an interim government

  2 September Interim government takes office without the League's membership; members are sworn into office

  Early September Ahmedabad, Allahabad, Bombay: violent clashes

  Mid-October Massacres in Noakhali and East Bengal

  26 October League members join the interim government

  October–November Massacres in Bihar

  6 November–2 March Gandhi remains in Noakhali

  Early November Garhmukhteshwar killing in United Provinces

  9 December Constituent Assembly formed without League members, adjourned until 20 January

  1947

  24 January Muslim League starts agitation for ‘civil liberties’ in Punjab

  20 February Attlee's statement that the British intend to grant independence not later than June 1948

  2 March Resignation of the Unionist Coalition Prime Minister, Khizr Tiwana, in Punjab