Partition
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Kharaiti Lal was determined to do what she could to rescue abducted women. She attached herself, with an army truck, to those Indian Army units still operating inside Pakistan to escort non-Muslim refugees. She took a Muslim name, so she could move more freely inside Pakistan, and when refugee columns were being assembled she went to local police stations demanding to be taken to the villages where people had told her women were being hidden. Sometimes the women didn’t want to come, terrified again as to how their families would react to having them back, but the majority did. She found one house belonging to a bad-tempered old Muslim man. There was a large pot on top of what was evidently a hole in the ground in his farmyard. Kharaiti asked him what was in there. Pigeons, he replied, and told her not to disturb them as they would fly away. Unperturbed she lifted the pot and found three terrified young girls. The old man produced an ancient revolver and threatened to shoot her. She told him he wouldn’t hit her even if he did shoot and he threw the weapon down in a fury. Inside his house they found another six girls. It was a brave campaign. ‘The women were all helpless’, she recalled. ‘They used to weep. God alone knows the things I have seen in those days. Some women’s hands had been chopped off, some ears, some arms.’33
The plight of women was as bad on both sides; overall it is thought about one hundred thousand disappeared, forced into marriage which usually involved forced conversion, used or just murdered. Sometimes they were taken during the raids on villages, at other times kidnapped from refugee columns when they lagged behind. Young teenage girls were at the most risk. Even once they reached India or Pakistan they were still vulnerable, especially as so many had lost parents. Khorshed Nehta was a welfare worker who met refugee trains at Delhi station. She reckoned that half the women she saw had been assaulted. There was also a major problem with Delhi brothel owners waiting on the station to trap the wretched and confused young girls. The story of a Sikh woman from West Punjab, Parkashwanti, was typical. Muslim goondas attacked her village. Her husband rushed her and her young son to the safety of the local rice mill but the goondas pursued them. Thinking she was sure to be raped, her husband tried to kill her. He slashed her with his sword but only succeeded in inflicting a deep gash in her jaw. She passed out. When she came round her husband and son had been sliced up and she had been routinely raped. Some months later she gave birth to a daughter.34
One of Singh Chopra’s tasks as brigade commander in Amritsar was to demarcate the border. Even as late as mid-October there was no physical barrier or even a sign to indicate where India stopped and Pakistan began. Local people knew where the Amritsar–Lahore district border crossed the Grand Trunk Road at Wagah, that artery of empire running from Delhi to Peshawar; it was this district border that was the line Radcliffe had followed. It was not clear to the refugees when they had actually reached their respective promised lands, the flat land with scattered brushwood and villages looked much the same on either side. On 11 October, Singh Chopra installed a joint checkpoint with his Pakistani counterpart, using some whitewashed oil drums and some stones swept into a low berm. Both sides erected tents and left a small guard there; a small swing gate was installed to regulate traffic. Finally they both erected flagpoles and together unveiled a small brass plaque to commemorate the event. It is still there today, despite the savage fighting of 1965, although the Wagah Crossing now looks like Fort Knox and bears little resemblance to that early informality.
More seriously, on 18 October the Indian and Pakistani armies exchanged fire with each other across the border, not far from the village where Kehar Singh had rescued his Muslim wife. There had been small incidents for some time, linked to attacks on refugee columns or cattle raiding, but this was the first time that formed bodies of troops had actually fought a skirmish. They fired at each other, fairly ineffectively, for most of the afternoon, with the Pakistanis sustaining four killed and six wounded. Singh Chopra signalled his opposite number in Lahore, Brigadier Nazir Ahmed. They knew each other well; both had served in the same battalion of the Frontier Force Rifles. The two commanders met in ‘the most friendly and cordial atmosphere’ at their newly installed border post. Nazir Ahmed later sent Singh Chopra a copy of the article that had appeared in the Civil and Military Gazette, Kipling’s old paper, which was a Lahore daily, with a letter saying ‘we hope and pray that we both now live up to the expectations we built up that day and also that of the public’.35 Very soon such pleasantries, and the spirit of cooperation that still existed in mid-October, would be gone.
On 15 August three Princely states – Hyderabad, Kashmir and Junagadh – had not acceded either to India or Pakistan. The Nawab of Bhopal had signed sealed papers, which he entrusted personally to Mountbatten on the understanding that they were not to be opened without his agreement. By the end of August he still hesitated. The nawab, Hamidullah Khan, emerges as one of the more sympathetic and tragic figures of the story of 1947. He felt he and his fellow princes had been badly let down by the British. Equally he realised that he must, for the good of his state, and he was among the most committed and conscientious of rulers, decide soon whether it would join India or Pakistan. He had ambitions to play a leading role in the future of Muslim India, and he was afraid that Jinnah would condemn him should he opt for India. On the other hand it made little sense for his important state, deep in central India, to join Pakistan. He flew to Karachi to consult with Jinnah. The Quaid was magnanimous. Bhopal duly acceded to India and swore to serve his new nation well. ‘If only’, recorded Hodson, the Reforms Commissioner before Menon and able chronicler of the period, ‘the rulers of the three [remaining] big apples had been like the Nawab of Bhopal!’ Instead ‘all three were weak, eccentric and devious’.36
Junagadh would prove altogether more complicated. It was a low-lying, seaboard state, south of Pakistan with a population of 700,000 who were mostly Hindu. It was important to Hindus, being where Lord Krishna had died and it was also home to the celebrated Hindu shrine at Somnath, desecrated by Mahmud of Ghazni in his violent conquest of 1024. However, its ruler was Muslim, Nawab Mohammad Mahabat Khanji III, the man who was besotted with dogs. Junagadh was geographically complicated. It contained parts of other states, had two vassal states, Mangrol and Barbariawad, irregular borders which protruded into Baroda and was generally regarded as being an indivisible part of the Kathiawar states, dominated by the Jam Sahib, the Maharajah of Nawanagar. The assumption had been that it would, along with the other Kathiawar states, accede to India. However, in May 1947, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto had staged a palace coup and taken over as the nawab’s dewan. He was a passionate supporter of Pakistan.
On 15 August Junagadh had subsequently acceded to Pakistan and the nawab had fled to Karachi, although in such a hurry that he left his baby behind at the airport. His decision, although technically perfectly legal, was seen by Nehru and Patel as illogical and unreasonable. They argued, correctly, that both Mangrol and Barbariawad had acceded to India, and that the Kathiawar states as a whole were an indivisible part of India. His accession left them, however, in a difficult position. Should India ultimately accept the nawab’s decision to take a Hindu majority state into Pakistan, it would set a precedent for the much more important state of Hyderabad. If on the other hand they refused to acknowledge the nawab’s choice and threatened to intervene by force in the interests of the majority Hindu population, they were likewise setting a dangerous precedent for Kashmir, where Pakistan could argue it was entitled to do the same thing. Even if they insisted on a plebiscite, which would have decided overwhelmingly in favour of India, they were establishing an equally difficult precedent for themselves in Kashmir.
The arguments raged backwards and forwards throughout September and October. Initially Nehru and Patel were for taking military action. Indian troops were instructed to surround Junagadh and the dewan told to remove his state forces from Barbariawad. Mountbatten managed to calm them both down, pointing out that India did not want to appear to the world as an aggressor. On 6 October N
ehru put out a statement calling for a plebiscite: ‘the fate of any territory’, he wrote, ‘should be decided by a referendum or plebiscite of the people concerned’.37 It was a far cry from his reaction to Caroe’s call for a plebiscite in the North West Frontier Province in April and they were words that he would come to regret in Kashmir.
By 21 October no progress had been made and as the refugee crisis seemed to be coming more under control, Delhi returned to the issue of Junagadh. Patel, impatient as always, a Gujurati from the local area, and with his sights firmly set on Hyderabad, argued that they were being weak and that as there had been no reaction to the 6 October announcement, they should take military action. He prevailed and on 1 November Indian troops moved into Barbariawad and Mangrol; there was no resistance and India peacefully took over the government. The situation in Junagadh itself was meanwhile slowly deteriorating. Bhutto wrote to Jinnah on 27 October that the Indian blockade meant that there was no communication with the outside world, food was becoming short and there was no revenue from the railways. What support there had been for joining Pakistan was waning. He asked Jinnah to hold a conference to find a peaceful solution but received no response. On 5 November the Junagadh State Council met and decided that they should have a ‘reorientation of state policy’.38 While the nawab, the state treasury and the dogs remained in Karachi, Bhutto asked India to accede, saying that they wanted to ‘save the State from complete administrative breakdown’.39 Indian forces moved in on 9 November. It would not be the last time that the Bhutto family would feature prominently in Pakistani politics.
The move elicited a furious response from Liaquat who demanded their immediate withdrawal. India’s action was a direct act of hostility, an invasion of Pakistani territory and violated international law. But India had set a precedent and even as this war of telegrams raged between Karachi and Delhi, both nations were faced with a much more serious challenge and one that would destroy any remaining willingness to cooperate. Whereas the bitterness of the suffering on both sides in the Punjab had done very serious damage to an already acrimonious relationship, it would still have been possible for Indian and Pakistani relations to recover. Liaquat was still travelling regularly to Delhi throughout October, lunching with Nehru, and, despite arguments such as that over Junagadh, conducting joint business. The relationship, which in June many thought would be similar to that enjoyed between the different countries in the United Kingdom, was certainly not broken beyond repair. By the end of October it would be.
11. NOVEMBER
EIUS RELIGIO
‘The situation was already so bad there was little that could happen that to make it worse’
(JINNAH)
On Sunday 2 November, Nehru broadcast to the Indian nation. ‘I want to speak to you tonight about Kashmir. Not about the beauty of that famous valley but about the horror it has had to face.’1 The events of late October and November in Kashmir would lead to tens of thousands – there is no accurate count – more deaths, another huge influx of refugees to Pakistan and cause the final breakdown of relations between the two countries. The extraordinary beauty of Kashmir seems to heighten the tragedy of its fate. Situated about five thousand feet up, a fertile and well-watered stretch of green in the lower ranges of the Karakoram and Hindu Kush, both contributory ranges to the Himalaya, the Vale of Kashmir is one of the most scenic and attractive places in the world. Srinagar, the summer capital, situated on the Jhelum river and beside Dal Lake, combined the rough charm of a mountain village with the elegance of a city made fashionable by tourism. A holiday on a Kashmiri houseboat was one of the ‘must dos’ of anyone in India who could afford it. Surrounded by mountains, and yet with a climate that reached 30 degrees in the summer and which allowed gardens to flourish, it was not surprising that for centuries it had offered an idyllic retreat from the plains. In 1947, 400 retired British officials and businessmen were living there.
Since Gandhi’s and Mountbatten’s visits in the summer, and with attention in both Delhi and Karachi firmly fixed on the Punjab, the situation in Kashmir had not been their priority. Maharajah Hari Singh still had not given any indication which way he would go and in October he remained undecided. As a Hindu ruler, supported by a privileged Hindu elite, his tendency might have been to India. However, he knew that accession to India would not be popular among his majority Muslim population and he had no love for Congress. He saw Nehru as a dangerous socialist, committed to democracy, who would have no use for the Dogra dynasty. Accession to Pakistan would have been in many ways the more obvious choice. Kashmir was geographically linked to Pakistan more closely than it was to India. Communications to Jammu and Srinagar, the respective winter and summer capitals, ran north-east from Rawalpindi and the Pakistani Punjab. There was no tarmac road to India, the only route being a dirt track that ran south from Srinagar over the mountains to Jammu and then on to Pathankot and Gurdaspur, against whose final inclusion in India Liaquat had protested so strongly.
The three great rivers that irrigated Pakistan, the Indus, the Jhelum and the Chenab, all had their headwaters in Kashmir. Timber, Kashmir’s main export, was largely carried down the Jhelum. Under the August Standstill Agreement, Pakistan continued to provide Kashmir’s post and telegraph services. Jinnah was likely to be more tolerant of the maharajah’s status and leave him with more authority than if he was cast to the mercy of Patel’s States Department. There would also have been little that India could have done about it, other than for Nehru to be personally devastated. It was the maharajah’s decision, which would be seen internationally as legitimate and, given his overwhelming Muslim majority, logical.
Yet accession to Pakistan would have been an anathema to Hari Singh. He could not bring himself to submit to Muslim majority rule and, however tolerant Jinnah might be, ultimately he saw his family being forced out by a Muslim government; he was probably correct in this. He argued, not particularly convincingly, that the strength of Kashmir was that it was a state in which all religions flourished and all citizens were equal, free and could worship as they pleased. This was manifestly untrue. His rule was
autocratic and despotic. The incidence of land revenue was triple that in the Punjab. The sale of grain was a state monopoly. There was a tax on every sheep, every hearth and every wife, and a professional tax on butchers, bakers, carpenters, boatmen and even prostitutes. There was differential treatment of Muslims and Hindus. A Muslim, not a Hindu, had to have a gun licence. A Hindu on conversion to Islam forfeited all interests in inherited property. The Muslims were beef eaters but cow slaughter was punishable by a ten-year jail sentence.2
Neither were Kashmiri politics straightforward. The main opposition to the maharajah’s rule, and that of his unpopular prime minister, Mehr Chand Mahajan, previously one of Congress’ nominations for the Punjab Boundary Commission, who had replaced the even more unpopular Pandit Kak, was Congress led by the Muslim Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, a close confidant and strong supporter of Nehru. He was therefore, rather like Dr Khan Sahib had been in the North West Frontier Province, a living example of Congress’ claim that it spoke for all Indian people regardless of religion. Abdullah, like Nehru, saw the situation in Kashmir as one of democracy versus autocracy and of the need for social and economic development in the face of oppressive feudal government. A product of Aligarh, he was, again like Nehru, a well-heeled socialist. He was married to Akbar Jahan, a daughter of Harry Nedou, from the family that owned Srinagar’s top Swiss hotel. His party, originally called the Muslim Conference, had changed its name to the National Conference to broaden its appeal; its flag was a white plough on a red background, proudly displaying its social agenda. By October Abdullah was finally, after sixteen months, out of prison, the maharajah having given in to Nehru’s demands to release him. He made a series of journeys to Delhi to consult with Nehru and Patel. On 17 October the Hindustan Times carried a front-page photograph of these two Kashmiris side by side.3
Not all Muslims supported Sheikh Abdullah. Pitch
ed against him was the League’s Kashmiri wing, confusingly also called the Muslim Conference, and led by Choudhury Ghulam Abbas, who increasingly became the focus of the pro-Pakistan lobby. While Indian pressure had secured Sheikh Abdullah’s release, Ghulam Abbas remained incarcerated, something on which the League’s Dawn newspaper was quick to comment. On the fringes of the League were those tribal leaders, part mystic, part bandit whom Kashmir and the Frontier produced generation after generation. They had the ability to combine religious fanaticism with tribal interest to inspire their Pathan tribesmen, men like the Fakir of Ipi who had tied down the Indian Army for so long in the 1930s. In 1947 the Fakir was not reconciled to the idea of Pakistan but others were; of these the most influential was the Pir of Manki Sharif, who claimed a following of 200,000. They would soon answer his call. He was assisted by a shadowy adventurer, Khurshid Anwar, who had once been a major in the army and had since been active in the League’s National Guards.
By mid-October neither Abdullah nor Ghulam Abbas had publicly declared their position on accession. It was generally, and reasonably, assumed that they would of course declare for India and Pakistan respectively but there was also a strong belief among Kashmiris in general that it might be possible, rather as the Nizam in Hyderabad was hoping, for their state to remain independent. Although Hari Singh must have known that this was highly unlikely, and that his mountain kingdom would be heavily dependent on its powerful neighbours for its economic survival, it gave him an excuse to prevaricate. His ambition was ‘to make Kashmir the Switzerland of the East – a State that is completely neutral. As much of our living depends on visitors, we must think of them. Visitors will not come to a state which is beset with communal problems’, announced the deputy prime minister, Ram Lal Batra, as late as mid-October.4 This was one area where the maharajah was, for once, in touch with popular opinion. Major General Scott, the British officer who had recently retired after eleven years heading the maharajah’s fairly incompetent state forces, briefed that the ‘vast majority of Kashmiris have no strong bias for either India or Pakistan and prefer to remain independent of either Dominion and free to earn their living’.5