The Great Partition (24 page)

Some soldiers, once they had been segregated for dispatch to their new homeland, passionately adopted the slogans of their new state and fired their rifles into the night sky as they passed through train stations
en route
, yelling ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ or ‘Jai Hind’.
³³
Food and water were handed through carriage windows to troops as they crossed into either India or Pakistan at the Wagah border crossing, and the air was filled with morale-boosting cheers and flags. In the later weeks of 1947, with increasing regularity, soldiers – on hearing of villages wiped out or sisters abducted – deserted to join militias to assist in the ethnic cleansing of Punjab.

As a result, the reliable manpower available to cover the vast tracts of land that were already up in flames, or likely to descend into the clutches of violence, was shockingly thin. At the same time, preparation for the departure of the British army was in full swing. Only a few hours’ travel from the Indian capital itself, in the flat expanses of Gurgaon, guerrilla warfare against a rural population known as the Meos was decimating whole villages. The state was unprepared and there was a botched attempt to send troops. A ‘British’ policeman, William Chaning Pearce, who was actually Canadian-born and educated in Switzerland, was in his late thirties at the time and responsible for policing the neighbouring district of Mathura. ‘Our resources for this task were pitifully meagre,’ he recalled. Ingenious arming was taking place in the countryside. ‘Although open violence ceased for the time being the extreme tension remained and both sides realised that the major storm was yet to come.’ There was a lull in the Gurgaon massacres, during which time Chaning Pearce remembered the bustling activity that took place:

The whole countryside therefore started at top speed to arm themselves for the supreme test. Practically every village started a gunpowder factory and village blacksmiths did a roaring trade converting any old piece of gas pipe into a so-called gun. Some surprisingly effective weapons started to appear. There were swords and spears by the thousand and even some home made sten guns and mortars. The latter, often made from the back-axle casing of a car, were usually mounted on strategic rooftops in villages to repel invaders.

There was only one jeep available in Chaning Pearce's district. For a while he and his men had the assistance of the Poona Horse, the Indian cavalry regiment, but soon, to their frustration, this was posted elsewhere. ‘We could not spare more than twenty or so armed men in static pickets.’
³⁴
In many places, policemen and soldiers were no match for the creative enterprise of amateur forces. Parties of volunteers could be seen marching along the major roads from the frontier and gathering along the Grand Trunk Road, reaching into Punjab, on their way to join the battle armed with swords, spears,
lathis
and muzzle-loading guns. One gang intercepted on their return from fighting in Gurgaon even had an elephant with an armoured
howdah
. The militias were also working hand in glove with the local leaders of princely states who acted as conduits for arms and transport.

During these fraught days, the state was trying to do two contradictory things at once: split the army in half, and prevent civil war. The chances of maintaining the peace looked increasingly slender.

‘In Delhi I found everyone extremely tired.’ Less than 50 miles away, a young American journalist Phillips Talbot recorded the frenetic activity in the capital in July 1947. ‘A viceregal adviser who is the essence of politeness yawned in my face. Jinnah looked haggard and drawn. Nehru's always explosive temperament had according to people working with him got the best of him more frequently than usual. Some feared he was nearing a nervous breakdown. Everywhere weary worn men were struggling with problems that were too vast and too complex for them to comprehend fully in the available time.’
³⁵
Partitioning the states in such a short time required immense physical and mental stamina. A photograph published in
Life
magazine in 1947 shows a frowning young official with his head in one hand, a pen in the other and a balance sheet spread open on the desk before him. All around him, piles of leather-bound books tower in great heaps. One pile of the books is labelled with a large white sign that says INDIA, while the tottering stack on the other side of the table is marked PAKISTAN. The official is dividing up a library between the two new nations. The division of library books was an especially contentious matter. Alternate volumes of the
Encyclopaedia Britannica
were meticulously allocated to each country.

New Delhi's offices had spun into overdrive. Partition had become a policy decision to be implemented and the loosely defined nationalistic aspirations of Indian and Pakistani people were now moulded into modern countries. Nationalist ambitions had to be squeezed into the prosaic boundaries of sovereign states. A literal interpretation of the words ‘Partition’ and ‘Pakistan’ now came to the fore, as the future shape of the subcontinent pivoted on delicate extrication of the resources needed to form a new Pakistani state from the old administrative husk of the Raj. Government staff separated all the physical and paper belongings of the former British Indian government. The task was left in the hands of civil servants and a Partition Council was established on 1 July, steered by two civil service officers, a Hindu, H.M. Patel and a Muslim (later a Prime Minister of Pakistan), Chaudhuri Mohammad Ali. This had the power to decide on the division of the spoils between India and Pakistan, and ten sub-committees dealt with splitting every arm of the government, from the most trivial to the most essential. Decisions that could not be made by the Partition Council were referred on to an arbitral tribunal. A general rule of thumb was agreed by which the division of physical, or movable, goods would be made along statistical lines, with 80 per cent of all goods going to India and 20 per cent to Pakistan. Every item of government property was counted and clerks drew up itemised lists. The goods to be counted and divided in the Indian Health Department included the following:

1. Durries 2. Table Lamps 3. Iron Safes 4. Cash Boxes 5. Cycles 6. Typewriters 7. Electric Heaters 8. Steel Trays 9. Stirrup Pumps 10. Time pieces 11. Clocks 12. Calculating machines 13. Locks 14. Magnifying glasses 15. Steel Racks 16. Steel Cupboard 17. Inkpots with stands 18. Curtains 19. Waste Paper Baskets 20. Paper Weights 21. Stationery 22. Officers’ Tables 23. Other Tables 24. Chairs 25. Almirahs 26. Screens 27. Arm Chairs 28. Wooden Racks 29. Wooden Trays
³⁶

The pathos of such a doctrinaire division carried out against the backdrop of the carnage unfolding nearby is not difficult to imagine.

Political tension, despite the optimistic and self-congratulatory assessments in the Viceroy's camp, did not abate. ‘There is no let-up in the negotiations with the parties,’ Mountbatten wrote to the Governor of Bombay, ‘and every day something fresh occurs which threatens to break down our slender basis of agreement.’ The speed with which so many small but cumulatively important decisions had to be made placed a nervous strain on the administrative elite. ‘An air of breathless haste seems to hang over the city,’ observed an American diplomat on the other side of the country. ‘Harassed government officials and politicians scamper around Calcutta as if pursued by the avenging angel.’
³⁷

In June 1947, every Muslim who worked for the government and resided in an Indian, rather than a Pakistani, area received a letter or was asked to make the choice of serving India or Pakistan. A propaganda war between the Indian and Pakistani governments started over the potential opportunities that would be on offer to young officers in the new states. Some hoped to gain promotion by plugging the gaps left by the departure of British officers. Frantic calculations about salaries, pensions, pay scales and promotions ensued. One cynic commented that ‘All senior Muslim officers, with or without substance, are busy planning and manoeuvring for their own uplift in Government employment.’
³⁸
Officers made tortuous decisions, based on a combination of political and personal reasons.

For Muslims in the more junior services, though, there was concern that promotion would become difficult because of suspicions about political loyalty if they stayed in India. It is an exaggeration to imagine that the members of the services who departed for Pakistan, as is sometimes suggested, were purely the elite. The majority of government employees who were given the chance of opting for Pakistan came from more humble jobs, on the railways or in the postal service. The decision whether or not to leave for Pakistan was most difficult for these low-ranking, low-earning workers: ‘An average man is in a great fix,’ confided a Muslim lawyer from the Central Provinces to Jinnah, ‘and every day railway and postal men are coming to me to consult.’ Visitors came to the lawyer's door asking for advice on the question of migration. ‘I feel I am unable to give them proper directions without first consulting you.’
³⁹
The decision was momentous – more momentous than many of them realised. When some of them wavered, changed their minds or tried to return to their old jobs they would find it difficult or impossible to resume their old lives.

Manzoor Alam Quraishi, a Muslim staunchly in favour of a united India, had just celebrated his thirtieth birthday and had taken up the position of District Magistrate in Pauri in the idyllic foothills of the Himalayas. He had no intention of opting for Pakistan, although his brother, Badre Alam, was a keen League supporter, and was making his way to the new state. ‘Even I got some threatening letters that I should migrate to Pakistan, otherwise I and my family would be wiped out by my own Hindu police guard,’ he later wrote. Quraishi stood his ground, although he took the precaution of carrying a loaded pistol while touring the district, and he had a long and distinguished career in India.
⁴⁰
For many others, though, even if they had never been keen on the League, Pakistan could seem like a safe haven.

As thousands of officials, railwaymen and clerks did make the choice to leave for Pakistan the logistics of the division became preposterous: 25,000 government employees relocated from one side to the other with 60,000 tonnes of baggage. From late July special trains set off across Punjab and Bengal carrying government workers to their new locations. Crates of belongings trailed behind civil servants who did not have clean clothes to wear to work when they finally arrived. Entire government departments operated from tents and barracks in the new Pakistani capital and those officials who had come from India remained intensely worried about the families they had left behind, many of whom could not accompany them immediately. ‘We were not allowed to take files, typewriters, or anything,’ recalled one administrative official, ‘we used to work in tents, and I remember using thorns instead of paper clips. Only one goods train of our office equipment ever reached Pakistan.’
⁴¹
A national myth was being forged and the solidarity and camaraderie of the situation dissolved class differences and pulled new compatriots together, if only momentarily. As the nationalist newspaper
Dawn
patriotically reported, ‘Cabinet ministers of Pakistan use packing cases as desks and crack jokes with painters who drip whitewash on them.’
⁴²

The reality was more gritty. The problems facing the Pakistani machinery and the confusions of the time were such that the new ‘Pakistanis’ – the word itself was still strange – requested that the first sittings of the Pakistani Constituent Assembly be held in Delhi. This request, which would have meant the two new constituent assemblies working in the same city at exactly the same time, was, not surprisingly, met with rapid refusal by the Indian ministers. So a new capital had to be built almost from scratch and quickly made ready for the tide of people coming from India.

The beleaguered new capital city of Karachi, a port city of around 600,000 people, was suddenly home to a new army of administrators and officials who were mostly Urdu speaking, from Delhi and the United Provinces, and quite at sea among the local Sindis, with their distinctive culture and language. The city became a building site. Big hoardings declared ‘Central Pakistani administrative buildings: under construction’. Immediately, these newcomers or
Muhajirs
as they liked to be called, started to make Pakistan in their own image. They hoped to be welcomed with open arms and wanted to play a leading role in shaping the future direction of Pakistan. ‘I continued to be idealistic and felt that a migration of such magnitude ought to have a meaning,’ recalled the novelist Intizar Husain, looking back at those times.
⁴³
It seemed only natural to the
Muhajirs
that Urdu, which was the old administrative language of British India and which had been the first language of many of the leading members of the Muslim League, should be the new state language. In deciding this, the
Muhajirs
began to trample on the rights and culture of the local Muslims in Sind – who might, of course, have had very different dreams of Pakistan and for whom Urdu was alien. This was storing up trouble for the future.

While this gradual division was being carried out in the summer months, clerks and officials had to continue working side by side, as they disentangled files and paperwork. In numerous offices, relations between officials deteriorated rather than improved. The sudden division of material goods – and human beings – brought out the worst pettiness and pedantry within the bureaucracy, as people reconstituted themselves as new national citizens, in opposition to one another. Clerks and junior officers played their part by accusing each other of hiding goods to prevent their reallocation and of substituting poorer quality furniture and stationery for better goods. This was the starting point for new imaginings of India and Pakistan and the perception of ‘the other’ within their most senior national institutions.