Partition of Punjab-Timeline 1947
By: Satinderjit Singh
Tags: Punjab, Indian Independence, British India, Partition Of India, Pakistan

Map 1-Punjab- British Control and Princely States

Partition of Punjab in 1947 was the subset of partition of India. But it has certain peculiar features. The most obvious was the presence of a significant third community- Sikhs- which was not the case in any of the province of undivided India. Also in Punjab there was Unionist party- different from both Congress and Muslim league — claiming itself to be a party of farmers and also ruling Punjab between 1937 -42. In the work below we will try to put a spot light on six months before August 47 leading to the tragic partition of state. How the communication failed among the important stakeholders in the state and how the brinkmanship and clever games eventually torn the state and lead to unprecedented violence.

Administration Divisions of Punjab

In order to better understand the circumstances at the start of 1947 we will look at the administrative break up of Punjab then. Punjab was divided into five blocks and total 29 districts- See Map1. The break up was as follows:

Ambala division (Ambala, Hisar, Rohtak, Shimla, Karnal) Lahore division (Gujranwala, Lahore, Amritsar, Sialkot, Gurdaspur, Shahkot) Jalandhar division, (Firozpur, Jalandhar, Hoshiarpur, Kangra, Ludhiana) Rawalpindi division ( Campbellpur (Now Attock), Rawalpindi, Jhelum, Gujarat, Mianwali, Shahpur) Multan division (Montgomery (Now Sahiwal), Lyallpur, Multan, Jhang, Dera-Ghazi -Khan, Muzaffargarh)

Population Breakup

Now the population breakup in terms of religion. As per 1941 census Muslim makes little over half of the population of the Punjab and its princely states. The exact figures were

Muslims 53.2%

Hindus 29.1%

Sikhs 14.9%

Christians 1.4%

But if we exclude the princely states the figures were more in favour of Muslims in British Punjab. The numbers were

Muslims 57.1 %

Hindus 26.6%

Sikhs 13.2%

Christians 1.7%

The latter numbers was more important because elections were held only in British India and not on princely states.

Political Setup

Now about the political control of the Punjab at the start of 1947. In early 1947 the Punjab was under the Prime minister ship of Malik Khizar Hayat Tiwana of Unionist party. Actually this is a bit of a story, which must be told here before we move further. To the surprise of most political pundits Unionist party had formed the government after 1937 election. After some years the popularity of party declined, due to death of top leaders like Sikander Hyat Khan and Sir Chhotu Ram as well as rising communal polarisation of the society. The elections of winters of 1945-46 was very tense and charged up. Muslim league went to the people on the demand of Pakistan. Congress and Sikh party (Akali Dal) were dead against it. Unionist party also maintain the secular stance and was against the demand of the Pakistan. The final results in seats were

Total 175

Muslim league+ 75

Congress 51

Akali Dal 22

Unionist party 20

Independent 7

Muslim league performed very well in Muslim constituencies (75 out of total 86 seats), but it didn’t get the majority on its own. Congress and Akali Dal supported the Unionist party and ganged up to keep Muslim league out of the power. Coalition government under the leadership of Khizar Hayat Tiwana was formed in Lahore. But this in a way defied the mandate of the people as voters had rejected the unionist party on large scale. So there was an element of incredibility or and unrepresentativeness of the government, particularly among the majority Muslim sections of the society. Khizar was labelled as the traitor of the community and was shown black flags on many occasions.

In 1946 the violence has already broken out in other parts of the country owing to the direct action plan call given by Jinnah of Muslim league. Much of the violence was carried out in Bengal and Bihar. In Punjab atmosphere was tense but yet the violence of that extent was not reported, although in the neighbouring Frontier province in the district of Hazara some Sikhs were killed by Muslim mobs in retaliation to the violence in other parts of the country.

With this background in mind let me run through the timeline of important dates and events which resulted into the partition of Punjab and accompanied violence

January 24: Due to rising communal tension, Khizar government banned RSS, Muslim national guard, certain Sikh organisation (Akal Sena, Akal Fauj). Muslim league people declared to openly defy the ban on Muslim national guard.

February 20: The British government declared that it will end its rule in India by June 1948. In reality the labour government post World War 2 was determined to move out of India. This declaration was mainly made as a reminder to stakeholders in India- Congress and Muslim league- to patch up their differences as soon as possible.

February 26: In view of massive agitation by the supporter of Muslim league, the government decided to revoke the ban and release all the prisoners who have defied the ban. This was a massive victory for Muslim league and the loss of face for the government.

March 2: Prime minister Khizar Hayat resigned from his post and created a constitutional crisis. The resignation was mainly because of inability of his government to control the communal passion in the state — latest ban episode being the final nail in the coffin.

March 3: There was a considerable excitement among the supporters of Muslim league. Some of them have assembled outside the Punjab legislative assembly Lahore. In a reckless move Master Tara Singh, the chief of Akali Dal, went to the legislative assembly -to which he was not a member- and unsheathed his Kirpan and shouted “Pakistan Murdabad” in front of the crowd of Muslim league supporters.

March 4: The very next day the clashes broke out between the Hindu-Sikh and Muslim communities in Amritsar and Lahore.

March 5: Same sort of clashes were reported next day in Multan, Jalandhar Rawalpindi and some other towns.

In a separate development, same day, Sir Eva Jenkins took control of administration as a Governor of Punjab. He remained in the chair till 14th August.

March 6 -13: In a gruesome violence Muslim gangs attacked Sikhs of Rawalpindi, Jhelum and Attock (Campbellpur then) killing somewhere between 2000 to 4000 Sikhs. The scale of violence was outrageous as well as the fact that the violence happened in Sikh dominated villages rather than cities. Many Hindus and Sikhs flees these areas and went towards princely states or eastern divisions of Punjab.

The shock to the Sikh community in particular was profound. Till hundred years back they were rulers of Punjab and in this beating their self image was severely dented. They vowed to take revenge of the killings and begin to prepare for counter attack.

Previously the official position of Sikhs were that they were against the Pakistan. Now they wanted that along with partition of country the Punjab should also be partitioned to safeguard their homelands as far as possible.

March 8: Congress agrees to the demand of the division of Punjab as proposed by the Sikhs. There was always allegation by Muslim league that Congress and Akali Dal working in tandem — and it do seems in many cases.

April -June: The government did controlled the terrible violence of March 47, but the communal tension in Punjab prevailed all along. Incident of Arson, Street bombs, stabbing continue to happen with regularity in the cities of Amritsar & Lahore.

May 15-16: Now the situation was that Muslim league wanted Pakistan but also wanted whole of Punjab within it. Congress/Akali Dal wanted either no Pakistan or if Pakistan then division of the state of Punjab. In order to convince Sikhs to agree to live with in Pakistan Jinnah and Liyakat Ali Khan met Maharaja Patiala and other leaders. Negotiation with Akali Dal by then was out of realm of possibility. No conclusive outcome came out of it. The ground reality was Hindus and Sikhs now wanted the division of Punjab.

June 3: Lord Mountbatten suddenly declared that by mid of August 1947 the British would leave India with two nation States India and Pakistan.

June 23: For Punjab and Bengal the plan was to get state Legislature divided into two blocks — one of Muslim majority districts and other of non Muslim majority district. They would be asked to give their opinion on the division of the state. Even if one of the block agreed to the division of the state then the British would go ahead and divide the state. In Punjab the Muslim block voted against the division of the state (69 (A):27 (F)) and non-Muslim block voted in favour of the division of state (50 (F): 22(A) ).

July 8: Sir Radcliff came to India as a president of boundary commission of Punjab. The Commission includes 4 judges -2 Muslims and 2 others. The plan was to assess the claim of all the stakeholders and divide the state as fairly as possible.

July 21-31: The Commission look into the claim of all the stakeholders- Muslim league, Congress, Sikhs and other minorities- as far as their demand of the boundaries of their Punjab was concerned.

Mid July: It was about this time that the tension between the two communities exaggerated even at the village level. Government was fast loosing the control of law and order. In eastern Punjab the gangs of Sikhs began to attack the Muslims.

August 1 to 14: Violence reached monsters proportion during this time and now the conflict had turned into civil war. The Princely states were openly involved in settling the score through Communal violence.

August 1: Government set up Punjab boundary force- the objective of which was to control law and order in 12 districts of Punjab. The forces were under-armed and under-manned. But the biggest flaw was that the forces does not cover any of the princely state where the maximum violence was taking place. The forces was disbanded on September 1st after the to native governments took power on both sides of the Punjab.

August 15: In West Punjab, on Pakistan side, the new Prime minister of the Punjab was Iftikhar Hussain Khan Mamdot. On East Punjab it was Dr Gopichand Bhargava

August 17-18: The declaration of boundary demarking two Punjabs was done after the independence of both India and Pakistan. To East Punjab the commission gave both Jallandhar and Ambala Divisions (13 districts in total) and Amritsar districts and some tehsils of Lahore and Gurdaspur District of Lahore Division. Rawalpindi, Multan and majority of Lahore Division went to west Pakistan. West Pakistan got around 62% of the land area and 55% of the population. Some controversy is there about the status of Gurdaspur district being changed at last minute so as to provide the land route for India to the Kashmir. The declaration of Boundaries further intensified the confusion and the resultant violence.

August - October: The violence continued in its worst form for three months. After the formation of indigenous government on both sides the nature of violence changed to ethnic cleansing on the respective sides. Perhaps the only town spared of ethnic cleansing was Malerkotla -with population of 80,000 (majority Muslims)-on Indian Punjab side.

The nature and scale of violence on Punjab side was much more horrific than anywhere else in the India. Although no statistical measure of number of deaths were maintained but the conservative estimates put the total number of deaths only of Punjab inhabitants as between 2 to 5 lakhs. The total number of Deaths in whole of India due to partition violence is estimated to be between 6–10 lakhs.

Although both sides have a different claims on number of deaths but neutral observer are of the opinion that Muslims suffered more of loss due to killings than other side. They also agreed that the material and money loss is more on the Hindu-Sikh sides.

As we look back those momentous events there is no escaping the fact that there is a pettiness shown by all sides which has resulted in such a tremendous loss of life and material. Muslim league for its brinkmanship policy, Congress for its behind the scene manipulation and Sikh leadership for its cantankerous nature. Above all the Britishers cannot also be absolved for preponing the partition and not taking enough administrative measure for the smooth transfer of people. They were most interested in running away after creating a chaos.