The Great Partition (46 page)

26.

, p. 55.

27.

, 26 Aug. 1947.

28.

Andrew Whitehead,

(School of Oriental and African Studies, 1997, 2000); Sahabzada Yaqub Khan, interviewed in Delhi, 15 March 1947; Burke, ed.,

, p. 35.

29.

Mangla Prasad, United Provinces Provincial Congress Secretary, Lucknow, to all district and town Congress committees, 30 July 1947. Quoted in Tan Tai Yong and G. Kudaisya,

(London and New York: Routledge, 2000), p. 37.

30.

, 13 Aug. 1947; 18 Aug. 1947.

31.

Syed Mahmud to S.K. Sinha,

. 1948 (undated) in V.N. Datta and B.E. Cleghorn, eds,

(Delhi: Macmillan, 1974), pp. 263–4.

32.

UPSA, Home Department Police (A), Box 22, 63/1948.

33.

, 22 July 1947. Cited in Tan and Kudaisya,

, p. 42. For a very detailed account of Independence Day ceremonies and celebrations, on which my account draws, see ibid., pp. 29–77.

34.

Tan and Kudaisya,

, pp. 29–77.

35.

Moon,

, p. 115.

36.

A.N. Bali,

(Jullundur: Akash Vani Prakashan, 1949), p. 39.

37.

Andrew Whitehead,

; Amjad Husain, interviewed in Lahore, 11 Oct. 1995.

38.

Ibid., Saroj Pachauri interviewed in Delhi, 28 Jan. 1997.

39.

Moon,

, p. 125.

40.

, 12 Aug. 1947.

41.

Constituent Assembly of Pakistan debates, 11 Aug. 1947 in M Rafique Afzal, ed.,

(Lahore: University of Punjab, 1967), p. 117.

42.

Alok Bhalla,

(New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2006), p. 162.

43.

IOR FNR, L/PJ/5/276, Wylie to Mountbatten, 10 Aug. 1947.

44.

Ayesha Jalal, Gyanendra Pandey and Mushirul Hasan have analysed these conflations and confusions which were worsened by setting up ‘nationalism’ as a binary to ‘communalism’. See, for instance, Ayesha Jalal, ‘Exploding Communalism: The Politics of Muslim Identity in South Asia’, in S. Bose and A. Jalal, eds,

(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997); G. Pandey, ‘Can a Muslim be an Indian?’

, 41.4 (1999),and M. Hasan,

(London and Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1997).

45.

Burke, ed.,

, p. 28. Speech to Constituent Assembly, 11 Aug. 1947.

46.

Abdul Quaiyum Khan to Syed Mahmud, 8/10 Feb. 1948 in Datta and Cleghorn, eds,

, p. 267.

47.

Whitehead,

, Danial Latifi interviewed in Delhi, 23 Dec. 1996.

48.

Figures are taken from tables and appendices in

(Delhi: Publications Division, Govt of India, 1948) and

(Govt. of Pakistan).

49.

Khushwant Singh,

(first published in 1956; edition cited Ravi Dayal and Permanent Black, New Delhi, 1988), p. 57.

50.

, 1st ser. vol. 2, pp. 824–5, ‘Jinnah Anxious to have non Muslims live in Pakistan’.

51.

, 2nd ser., vol. 4, p. 442. Letter to Premiers of Provinces, 15 Oct. 1947.

52.

Butalia,

, p. 80.

53.

Ibid., p. 92.

54.

Emergency Committee minutes, 7 Sept. 1947, reprinted in H. M. Patel,

, p. 292.

55.

, p. 6.

56.

Whitehead,

Harcharan Singh Nirman interviewed in Chandigarh, 17 March 1997.

57.

Symonds,

, p. 55.

58.

Sarah Ansari,

(Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 54.

59.

Moon,

, pp. 180–1.

60.

, p. 34.

61.

M. Bourke-White,

(New York, 1949), p. 20.

62.

Ibid., pp. 17–18.

63.

Whitehead,

, Kuldip Nayar, interviewed in Delhi, 29 Oct. 1996.

64.

Khushwant Singh,

, p. 57.

65.

Whitehead,

Nasreen Azhar, interviewed in Islamabad, 25 Sept. 1995.

66.

Moon,

, pp. 110–11.

67.

Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah,

(Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1963), p. 158; Mian Amiruddin's ‘Memories of Partition’, in Ahmad Salim, ed.,

(Delhi, 2006), pp. 257, 251.

68.

, p. 67.

69.

Whitehead,

, Khorshed Mehta, interviewed in Delhi, 18 Jan. 1997.

70.

The Indian government estimated at the end of 1947 that there were 1.25 million refugees in 160 camps in India and the Pakistani government estimated that there were 1,116,500 refugees in 16 camps in West Punjab (Sources:

and

).

71.

Report by K.M. Malik Khuda Baksh, 4 Oct. 1947, reproduced in

, p. 209.

72.

Anis Kidwai, ‘In the Shadow of Freedom’, trans. from Urdu and reproduced in Hasan, ed.,

, vol. 2, pp. 167–80.

1.

Note by Delhi's Superintendent of Police, 4 Jan. 1948 enclosed in

, vol. 6, pp. 260–1.

2.

, vol. 6, p. 162.

3.

Catherine Rey-Schirr, ‘The ICRC's Activities on the Indian Subcontinent following Partition (1947–1949)’,

, 323 (1998), pp. 267–91, p. 268.

4.

, vol. 6, p. 244. Nehru to V. Patel, 12 Jan. 1948.

5.

Ibid., pp. 119–20. Bardoloi to Patel, 5 May 1948.

6.

Sarah Ansari,

(Karachi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), pp. 46–121.

7.

(Islamabad: Govt of Pakistan, 1993), pp. 310–11.

8.

Quoted in Urvashi Butalia, ‘An Archive with a Difference: Partition Letters’, in Suvir Kaul, ed.,

(Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 219. Urvashi Butalia's brilliant account of these letters suggests that, ‘notwithstanding their sense of reproach, and sometimes alienation’, through all the letters ‘ran a thread of commitment to the new nation, and to the newly-forming state’.

9.

A classic example of this thinking is

(Govt of Bombay, 1958), p. 28: ‘The rehabilitation of millions of displaced persons from Pakistan, who have migrated to our country, no doubt, has presented special problems but viewed broadly, it has to be regarded as an essential aspect of development of the economy of the country as a whole.’ On the intellectual consensus around ‘development’ as a state goal, the prioritisation of scientific expertise and state welfare, and its interpretation by nationalist elites in the late colonial state, see in particular, Benjamin Zachariah,

(New Delhi and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

10.

(Publications Division, Ministry of Information and Broadcasting, Govt of India, 1948), p. 17.

11.

The Indian and Pakistani governments also used Victorian terms such as ‘the deserving poor’ and ‘sloth’ (no doubt inherited from the lexicon of the Raj) in their discussion of the displaced. Hard-working refugees who would stand on their own two feet were to be rewarded and encouraged while ‘measures to eliminate forced idleness’ were essential. While touring the kitchens of refugee camps in Lahore, Jinnah instructed the staff to, ‘Make the refugees work. Do not let them nurse the idea that they are guests for all time.’

 Dependency on the state was an expensive sin to be discouraged, and this official mindset was entirely compatible with socialistic, centralised planning projects.

12.

AICC, G–18 (Part 1), Frontier and Punjab Riot Sufferer Committee to Pant, 4 Oct. 1947; UPSA, Relief and Rehabilitation, 197(18)/47, Pakistan Sufferers Cooperative Housing Society.

13.

Ravinder Kaur, ‘Planning Urban Chaos: State and Refugees in Post-partition Delhi’, in E. Hust and M. Mann, eds,

(New Delhi: Manohar, 2005), p. 235. This attitude was most pronounced in the different way that Bengali and Punjabi refugees were treated by the Indian government. Punjabis had the lion's share of these schemes and benefited most from government help while the Bengalis were often left to fend for themselves. Less money was spent, per head, on Bengali than Punjabi refugees. The Punjabi crisis was more visible in the national capital than the Bengali one as the region was closer and Partition's damage was more concentrated, bloody and horrifying. But as the historian Joya Chatterji has illustrated, Congress politicians also drew on old colonial stereotypes and blatantly discriminated between the hardy Punjabis and the ‘weak’, ‘dependent’ Bengalis. Joya Chatterji, ‘Right or Charity? Relief and Rehabilitation in West Bengal’, in Kaul, ed.,

.

14.

NMML AIHM C–177. The Hindu Mahasabha claimed that 15 were killed and 60 injured in the firing.

15.

L. C. Jain,

(Delhi: Concept Publishing Co., 1998), p. 75.

16.

UPSA Relief and Rehabilitation, Box 68 153/51, Disbanding of women's home at Darbhangha Castle, Allahabad.

17.

UPSA Relief and Rehabilitation C, File MC/50 14 July 1951.

18.

UPSA Relief and Rehabilitation Dept, 273/48 Box 18, 12 March 1950.

19.

Ata-ur-Rehman, ed.,

(Lahore and Karachi: Dost Associates,

1998).

20.

, p. 296.

21.

Ibid., Letter to the editor of the

on conditions at Walton camp, 23 Aug. 1947 from Mohammad Qureshi, p. 231.

22.

, 19 Sept. 1947 p. 258.

23.

W. Anderson and S. Damle,

(Boulder: Westview, 1987), p. 50.

24.

Mawdudi's statement, 7 Oct. 1947, reproduced in

, pp. 267–8. On Jam ‘at-i Islami and refugee rehabilitation in Pakistan, see Seyyed Vali Reza Nasr,