'They were determined to strangle Pakistan at birth'

[punit]

'They were determined to strangle Pakistan at birth' - Rediff.com India News


Upon the Partition of the former British Indian empire in August 1947, terrible sectarian massacres swept across the divided Punjab province. As millions fled in both directions across the new border seeking safety, the Indian capital of Delhi swelled with tens of thousands of angry and traumatised Hindu and Sikh refugees. The riots spread to Delhi in early September, paralysing the government for several days and raising real fears that both India and Pakistan were devolving into chaos:

Initially none of the Indian leaders doubted that Sikhs, who had played a central role in the Punjab violence, had spearheaded the Delhi attacks, too. Over 200,000 non-Muslim refugees from the Punjab had squeezed into the capital, and plenty of them thirsted for revenge.

Home Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel called in local Sikh leaders and threatened to toss their followers into concentration camps if the violence did not cease. He also gave the Army a 'free hand' to go after Sikh troublemakers. Commanders ordered their troops to shoot rioters on sight. Though the military could not admit openly to targeting any particular community, Governor-General Lord Louis Mountbatten joked grimly, 'The object would have been achieved if in 48 hours' time the local graves and concentration camps were occupied more fully by men with long beards than those without.'

Very quickly, however, Patel's assessment of the threat changed. The problem was not just the Sikhs. Earlier police reports had also warned of a brewing Muslim uprising in the capital. Most of the city's ammunition dealers were Muslim, as were most of its blacksmiths. The latter had supposedly converted their workshops to churn out bombs, mortars and bullets. Patel had been worried enough about the threat to issue licenses to several new Hindu arms dealers in Delhi. He had 'been giving arms liberally to non-Muslim applicants' for self-defence, he reassured a colleague.

Some Delhi Muslims were indeed armed. They fought back against the police as well as the Hindu and Sikh gangs; among reported gunshot victims non-Muslims actually outnumbered Muslims 45 to 20. Though evidence of any conspiracy is scant, quite a few Delhi-ites seemed to believe that the city's Muslims posed as great a threat as the death squads, if not greater.

During the riots, officials trying to rescue Muslims often found the public less than eager to help. Owners of private cars and trucks removed key parts so that the authorities couldn't requisition the vehicles. Volunteer drivers pretended to get lost or to develop engine trouble when asked to deliver aid to Muslim areas. (Eventually the government enlisted idealistic students to ride along and watch over them.) Even four days into the rioting, the American military attache witnessed Army troops standing by as Muslim women and children were clubbed to death at Delhi's railway station.

Patel was more in tune with the popular mood than India's Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. While the principle that Hindus and Muslims should be able to live together remained central to Nehru's vision for India, the Sardar was less sentimental. He did not trust that all of India's Muslims, many of whom had until recently supported Jinnah, had switched loyalties. If they did not think of themselves as Indians, he believed, then they belonged in Pakistan.

Nehru would almost certainly have lost an open fight with his deputy. Horrified by the casualty reports, the prime minister tried to ban Sikhs from wearing their ceremonial knives, known as kirpans. Patel pushed back, saying the decree discriminated against the Sikh faith.

'Murder is not to be justified in the name of religion,' Nehru protested. Yet after a 'violent disagreement' between the two men, the Sardar triumphed. Sikhs regained the right to carry their daggers after a 48-hour pause.

Nehru seemed to believe he had a better chance of quelling the unrest singlehandedly than by working through his own administration. He went 'on the prowl whenever he could escape from the (Cabinet) table, and took appalling personal risks,' Mountbatten's chief of staff Lord Hastings 'Pug' Ismay recalled.

Nehru would angrily face down mobs himself, rushing from trouble spot to trouble spot. A veritable tent city, filled with Muslim refugees, sprouted on the lawns of his York Road bungalow.

One night a Muslim friend named Badruddin Tyabji showed up at Nehru's door to alert him to an especially troubled area -- the Minto Bridge, which Muslims fleeing their Old Delhi neighbourhoods had to cross to reach the safety of refugee camps in New Delhi. Each night, Tyabji said, gangs of Sikhs and Hindus lurked nearby and sprung upon the defenceless Muslims as they trudged past.

Nehru immediately bolted from his seat and dashed upstairs. He returned a few minutes later holding a dusty, ungainly revolver. The gun had once belonged to his father Motilal and hadn't been fired in years. He had a plan, he told Tyabji. They would don soiled and torn kurtas and drive up to Minto Bridge themselves that night.

Disguised as refugees, they'd cross the bridge, and when the thugs tried to waylay them 'we would shoot them down!'

The stunned Tyabji was able to persuade the leader of the world's second-biggest nation 'only with great difficulty' that 'some less hazardous and more effective method for putting an end to this kind of crime should not be too difficult to devise.' Mountbatten feared Nehru's impulsiveness would get him killed, and assigned soldiers to watch over him.

Nehru's individual heroics evoked great admiration in men like Ismay and Mountbatten. But they did little for Delhi's Muslims. After the initial wave of attacks, thousands had fled their homes. Authorities almost immediately started evacuating the rest, claiming they could not guarantee the safety of residents if they remained where they were.

Muslims were dumped in guarded sites by the truckload -- places which it would be generous to describe as refugee camps. Within a week, over 50,000 were crammed into the Purana Qila, a ruined fort. They huddled pitifully on the muddy ground with no lights, no latrines, and hardly any water or food. The Pakistan government flew in shipments of cooked rice and chapatis all the way from Lahore to feed them.

Ismay melodramatically compared the scene at the Purana Qila to 'Belsen' without the gas chambers. Dignified Muslim professors and lawyers were squashed next to cooks and mechanics, longtime Gandhians next to stranded, would-be Pakistan bureaucrats. Wounded and sick moaned without medical attention; babies were born in the open. Armed Sikhs patrolled the one choked entrance, taking down the license plate numbers of Europeans driving in to deliver food and supplies to their friends and former servants.

With the help of Gurkha and South Indian troops -- who were less vulnerable to the sectarian passions roiling their northern counterparts -- authorities managed to control the worst of the violence within a week.

Volunteers began to clean up the streets, and ration shops reopened. Nehru asked the governors of other Indian provinces to take in tens of thousands of Punjab refugees, to get them out of the capital.

But the riots fatally undermined any trust Pakistani leaders may have had in their Indian counterparts. Nehru's estimate that 1,000 victims had died in the rioting was generally considered 'ridiculous,' according to US Ambassador Henry Grady. He figured the true toll to be at least five times higher; others said 20 times.

At the height of the violence, Pakistan's founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah was inundated with hysterical reports from his ambassador in Delhi, Zakir Hussain. Hundreds of Muslim refugees had carpeted the grounds of his house, Hussain reported, and the embassy's food supplies were running out. He described the Indian government as either intent upon eliminating the capital's Muslim population, or indifferent to their fate. Army troops were openly gunning down innocent Muslims. In one particularly florid cable Hussain warned, 'The entire Muslim population of India is facing total extermination.'

A conviction was taking hold among Jinnah and his lieutenants that India had launched an 'undeclared war' on the weaker Pakistan. The Indian leaders seemed incapable of transferring Pakistan government servants to the new capital Karachi, or of protecting them in their Delhi homes. Cargo trains full of equipment and supplies meant for Pakistan were being derailed and torched in the Punjab. At least some members of the Indian Cabinet appeared to be winking at the Sikhs' murderous activities. 'It is obvious that their orders are not carried out,' one of Hussain's cables said of the Indian leaders, 'or at least different members of the government are following conflicting policies.'

In mid-September, Ismay spent three days in Karachi trying to convince Jinnah that the Indian government bore Pakistan nothing but goodwill. Jinnah was dismissive. He was convinced that Sikh and Hindu militia leaders had planned the violence in the Punjab as well as Delhi. Though intelligence had given some inkling of their plans over the summer, they had been allowed to walk free.

With her vast resources and powerful military, Jinnah believed, India could even now have suppressed the Sikhs if only Nehru had had the necessary 'will and guts.' Instead he could not even guarantee the safety of Muslims in his own capital.

Ismay returned to Delhi profoundly depressed. In a secret codicil to his report, meant for Mountbatten's eyes only, he warned that Jinnah had begun speaking in dangerously warlike tones. In the very first hour of their talks the Pakistani leader had struck Ismay 'as a man who had given up all hope of further cooperation with the Government of India.'

All that had happened in the month since Independence just 'went to prove that they were determined to strangle Pakistan at birth,' Jinnah had told Ismay grimly. 'There is nothing for it but to fight it out.'

Nisid Hajari is a member of the Bloomberg View editorial board and the author of Midnight's Furies: The Deadly Legacy of India's Partition, from which this is excerpted.

good riddance !

 

[Sneaker]

I didn't ask a question, I pointed out a flaw in your position, one that you still haven't corrected. Your timelines are still wrong.

The invasion of J&K by Lashkar members commenced in force on October 22, 1947 - prior to that the situation involve small scale 'harassing attacks' along the peripheries of the State (as far as the participation of individuals not resident in the State was concerned). The Indian military and police deployments to enforce blockades of Junagadh and its principalities were initiated between late September to early October, and India's diplomatic exchanges till that point had made clear that it was not going to accept Junagadh's accession

I have my timelines correct. Blockding Junagadh isn't violation of anything. Infact, it is respecting the boundaries because we did not violate its borders but safeguarded our own borders. You did it in J&K changing the whole situation. We did nothing with regards to Hyderabad till 1948... Compare that to what you did with J&K, you blockaded it even before 15 aug 1947!! You confiscated trucks belonging to J&K, blocked the railroad and there was complete economic blockade before aug and we replicated the same during september in junagadh..it was always pakistan initiating and we towing the line, but we just beat you in your own game.. do not blame us for being better at your own game...

 

[Indika]

There's that mental block again, that inability to get past the Indian Establishment's narrative, especially when that narrative has holes poked into it.

There's a mental block and narrative , truly spoken. That holds good for pakistan not for india. You end up giving your own crapsh... version.

I'm not interested in 'historical indicators' going back thousands ? if aurangazeb or razakars existed thousands of years ago then you must be living in time warp. If your tribal raiders had not stopped for looting and raping in kashmir they would have taken the entire state. lets go back 40 years back to bangladesh, your own hamadoor rahman commission put it very plainly about the barbarsim that keeps showing up every now and then.

"The Report's findings accuse the Pakistani Army of carrying out senseless and wanton arson, killings in the countryside, killing of intellectuals and professionals and burying them in mass graves, killing of Bengali Officers and soldiers on the pretence of quelling their rebellion, killing East Pakistani civilian officers, businessmen and industrialists, raping a large number of East Pakistani women as a deliberate act of revenge, retaliation and torture, and deliberate killing of members of the Hindu minority.[6] "

Culture,attitude,genes...etc dont get altered in a day or two. It takes ages to take shape. Every wondered why pakistan is never taken seriously on international stage bcos no one else believe their narrative(other than for terrorism & nukes).

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I have my timelines correct. Blockding Junagadh isn't violation of anything.

Again whose facts ?? your facts remains only your facts till it doesn't passes the scrutiny of some third party.
So you feel you are free to deem who is fair and who is unfair commentator,actually that's being very convenient for you . That's not very fair.

I've referenced established facts, reported on by Indian, Pakistani and 'third party' observers:

-India's official rejection of Junagadh's accession to Pakistan is fact (see diplomatic cables exchanged between India, Pakistan and the British and records of meetings between India, Pakistan and the British, on the subject of Junagadh)
-The Indian blockade, destabilization invasion and annexation of Junagahd its principalities etc. is fact. (see Indian records detailing the content of meetings between Nehru, Patel, Indian military, Mountbatten and various Indian officials on the subject of Junagadh)
-The communal violence, chaos and poor response (on both sides) is fact. The impact of communal violence on the leadership, the reports from Pakistani government representatives on the situation in India is also fact. Please note that I am not taking a position on the validity of those reports regarding the communal violence. I'm detailing the events and the interpretation of those events by the Pakistani leadership to help provide context about how the Pakistani leadership viewed the threat from India at that point in time, and how those perceptions played into Pakistani decision making.​

Many Western, Indian (and some Pakistani) tend to ignore the interplay of all these factors and the role they played in Pakistan's policy making at the time, and end up presenting a simplistic and denigrated picture of Pakistan based solely on the final 'action' of the 'Qaaili Invasion and Military intervention in J&K'. It's the equivalent of ignoring everything the Nazi's did and just focusing on the fact that Germany was bombed to pieces, invaded and occupied by Allied troops.

Actually it was other way round , it was Pakistan's actions (which obviously started from Kasmir annexation and for obvious reasons you don't see that as expansionist), which defined India's foreign policy making and forget action , we only reacted . And don't even try to mention Afghanistan since you will get busted over there.

You still haven't corrected the timeline - I gave you specific dates, which can be corroborated by referencing the official records of meetings between Nehru, Mountbatten and various other Indian officials at the time when Indian plans to blockade and occupy Junagadh and its principalities were being formulated and implemented.

So either give me your reasons for why the earlier timeline of India's blockade and invasion of Junagadh is incorrect, or stop arguing that 'Pakistan's invasion of J&K was the first trigger'. The facts (in the absence of a rebuttal to the timeline of Indian intervention in Junagadh) suggest that India triggered the first military confrontations and the eventual Pakistani policies in J&K.

 

[SwAggeR]

@AgNoStiC MuSliM ,cut all the crap and just tell me one simple thing Junagadh falls on which side Radcliffe line ??

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

@AgNoStiC MuSliM ,cut all the crap and just tell me one simple thing Junagadh falls on which side Radcliffe line ??

Prior to India's illegal occupation and annexation, Junagadh did not fall on the Indian side of the Radcliffe Line, since Pakistan (and Junagadh's ruler's) contention was that Pakistan had a geographical link to Junagadh via the sea.

 

[SwAggeR]

Prior to India's illegal occupation and annexation, Junagadh did not fall on the Indian side of the Radcliffe Line, since Pakistan (and Junagadh's ruler's) contention was that Pakistan had a geographical link to Junagadh via the sea.

To be precise Radcliffe line showing map was exchanged by India and Pakistan on 17'th August.When did India illegally occupy that ?? Radcliffe line didn't left any option for sea linkage.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

To be precise Radcliffe line showing map was exchanged by India and Pakistan on 17'th August.When did India illegally occupy that ?? Radcliffe line didn't left any option for sea linkage.

My comment of 'illegal occupation and annexation' was in reference to Junagadh.

And if the Radcliff Line 'left no option for sea linkage', how exactly do you explain the existence of East Pakistan at that time?

 

[SwAggeR]

My comment of 'illegal occupation and annexation' was in reference to Junagadh.

And if the Radcliff Line 'left no option for sea linkage', how exactly do you explain the existence of East Pakistan at that time?

I asked you for date, didn't I ?? Why shying away ?? I know why you shied away.

Now let me enlighten you , it happened in month of november.When legal maps were exchanged by both parties on 17 'th of August in which Junagarh was shown as part of India then how come it's merging into India in month of november can become illegal ?? This absurdity is the reason why Pakistan keeps crying river and nobody heeds any attention.

You can't compare Bangladesh with Junagadh. Size matters !!

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

I asked you for date, didn't I ?? Why shying away ?? I know why you shied away.

Now let me enlighten you , it happened in month of november.When legal maps were exchanged by both parties on 17 'th of August in which Junagarh was shown as part of India then how come it's merging into India in month of november can become illegal ?? This absurdity is the reason why Pakistan keeps crying river and nobody heeds any attention.

You can't compare Bangladesh with Junagadh. Size matters !!

The problem with the line of argument you're taking is that while it's a clever bit of smoke and mirrors, it's just not valid and a complete misinterpretation/distortion of the intent of the Radcliffe Line demarcation. The Radcliffe demarcation of the border between India and Pakistan was an exercise to define the borders between India and West Pakistan (in the Punjab and Sindh) and East Pakistan and India (Bengal, Bihar etc).

The only Princely States that were included as the territory of India and Pakistan at the time of the publication of the Radcliffe Line were the ones that had already completed accession to one or the other country. The line did not make any of the Princely States that had not made a decision on accession to either country part of them - so Hyderabad, Junagadh, Munavadh, J&K etc were not considered part of Indian or Pakistani territory.

Jungadh acceded to Pakistan in August and Pakistan accepted the accession a few months later. It was never part of India until the illegal Indian invasion and annexation of State took place.

 

[SQ8]

Culture,attitude,genes...etc dont get altered in a day or two. It takes ages to take shape. Every wondered why pakistan is never taken seriously on international stage bcos no one else believe their narrative(other than for terrorism & nukes).

By your logic then, those genes on your end must be full of rape and being raped. But then again, not everyone adheres to your rather infantile comprehension of reality.

 

[SwAggeR]

The problem with the line of argument you're taking is that while it's a clever bit of smoke and mirrors, it's just not valid and a complete misinterpretation/distortion of the intent of the Radcliffe Line demarcation. The Radcliffe demarcation of the border between India and Pakistan was an exercise to define the borders between India and West Pakistan (in the Punjab and Sindh) and East Pakistan and India (Bengal, Bihar etc).

The only Princely States that were included as the territory of India and Pakistan at the time of the publication of the Radcliffe Line were the ones that had already completed accession to one or the other country. The line did not make any of the Princely States that had not made a decision on accession to either country part of them - so Hyderabad, Junagadh, Munavadh, J&K etc were not considered part of Indian or Pakistani territory.

Jungadh acceded to Pakistan in August and Pakistan accepted the accession a few months later. It was never part of India until the illegal Indian invasion and annexation of State took place.

lol, prior to map being exchanged jugadh had come up in discussion of Radcliffe committee which had representations from India and Pakistan both.It was mutually agreed upon that Junagadh would go to India , same was the situation with chittagong hills areas who wanted to be merged with India but since it was mutually agreed upon , India didn't use force to claim it.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

lol, prior to map being exchanged jugadh had come up in discussion of Radcliffe committee which had representations from India and Pakistan both.It was mutually agreed upon that Junagadh would go to India , same was the situation with chittagong hills areas who wanted to be merged with India but since it was mutually agreed upon , India didn't use force to claim it.

Can you please provide links to documents that detail this alleged 'mutual agreement that Junagadh would be part of India', especially the parts of the 'mutual agreement' where Pakistan and the ruler of the Princely State specifically agreed to this arrangement?

The argument appears rather absurd from the outset given that the plan for partition very specifically covered the accession of Princely States as a 'unique issue'. The reason to treat the Princely States as such was the legal nature of their relationship with the British-Indian government. Therefore even if a claim such as yours (of the existence of mutual agreements that decided the fate of Princely States, without the formal consent of the rulers of those Princely States) was true, such an agreement would be illegal under the Partition Agreement that the British, India and Pakistan all agreed to.

You might perhaps be confusing a 'general desire' on the part of Mountbatten and Nehru, that 'Hindu majority States contiguous with India should elect to accede to the nation-State of India, rather than remain independent or accede to Pakistan. The 'desire' to see a particular outcome is not a 'legal agreement or commitment', it is just that, a 'desire'. The Princely States had the legal option to remain independent (as Hyderabad attempted to do) under the rules of partition, but it was an option that was 'discouraged' by the British and Indian leadership.

 

[Stephen Cohen]

Culture,attitude,genes...etc dont get altered in a day or two. It takes ages to take shape. Every wondered why pakistan is never taken seriously on international stage bcos no one else believe their narrative(other than for terrorism & nukes).

Diminished self-esteem of Pakistanis comes from having little presence in today’s world affairs whether in Economy ;science and technology or in culture and the arts.

 

[AgNoStiC MuSliM]

There's a mental block and narrative , truly spoken. That holds good for pakistan not for india. You end up giving your own crapsh... version....
...
I'm not interested in 'historical indicators' going back thousands ?

Your rant addresses none of the points I made in posts 22 and 27 - what's the relevance of Aurangzeb or 1971 to India's illegal invasion and occupation of Junagadh, or to my general argument attempting to establish context for the actions of the Pakistani leadership in 1947? Even the isolated atrocities alleged to have been committed by the Tribals intervening in Kashmir are an irrelevant point, because they were actions on the part of a few without Pakistani government sanction, and occurred when the actual policy decisions of taking an aggressive and offensive stance on Kashmir to protect Pakistani interests had already been made.

The central theme of my posts on this thread has been one of providing context and background for the decisions Pakistani leaders made in 1947, utilizing the OP as a starting point.

Perhaps you should take time out to actually comprehend the content of the posts you reply to, instead of blindly regurgitating the oh so predictable Indian rants about 'Muslim invaders, atrocities by the Tribals in Kashmir that grow by leaps and bounds with no actual evidentiary support each time they get told and of course the evergreen 'Tales of Pakistani Monsters in East Pakistan from 1971'.

It's like the Indian Establishment handed out a 'playbook' to people like you called,

'What to do when you have no response for a Pakistani's arguments: Pick one or more from the following - no need to be concerned bout their relevance to the discussion:
1. Muslim invaders who were uncivilized barbarians invaded and destroyed India
2. Tribal invaders raped and pillaged and burned a path of destruction through Kashmir in 1947
3. In 1971 Pakistani Monsters raped and killed millions and millions of people
4. Pakistan and Pakistanis are a failure on the world stage"