SUSPICION IN PAKISTAN
By BRIGADIER DESMOND YOUNG
IF the Governments of India and Pakistan are to prosper or even to survive they must find means of working amicably together. This is so obvious to anyone who looks at a map, and the alter- natives are so clearly chaos, civil war and probably foreign invasion, that many well-disposed observers in this country regard real agree- ment on defence, finance, tariffs, etc., as only a question of time. Readiness to compromise is not, however, an Indian characteristic, and no such easy confidence is evident on the spot. Government of India spokesmen, in statements beamed to overseas audiences, maintain that everything will come right in due course—given good- will on the other side. In Pakistan even educated and moderate Muslims doubt not only the accuracy but the honesty of these pre- dictions. Almost to a man they sincerely believe that the Hindu leaders, though they were obliged to accept partition in order to get rid of the British, have not, and never have had, any intention of allowing it to work.
The short-term plan, they say, is so to embarrass the Government of Pakistan as to prevent it functioning from the start ; the long-term plan to reabsorb, by force if necessary, its territory into the Hindu Raj. The methods hitherto adopted, they allege, have been to burn or cause to be burnt the special trains carrying essential files and records from Delhi to Karachi ; to quibble to the utmost over the division of assets ; to delay deliveries of military equipment assigned to Pakistan ; to interfere with and impede Pakistan mails, telegrams and money transfers ; to withdraw Hindu and Sikh personnel from Pakistan banks and business houses and, above all, by encouraging and aiding the Sikhs in massacre and intimidation, to make it im- possible for Muslims to live and work in the East Punjab or Delhi, thus flooding Pakistan with a mass of refugees which she cannot absorb and creating a homeless, penniless body of malcontents whose hatred of Hindus and Sikhs may well turn into hostility towards a Government which is unable to provide for them. Though the Punjab and Delhi have been the main storm centres up to now, they expect similar tactics to be adopted before long in the United Pro- vinces and everywhere else where there is a Muslim minority. Mean- while every opportunity is being taken, they say, as in Kashmir Lid Janagadh, to involve Pakistan in a cold war which may develop into a shooting war before she has time to organise her army.
These charges are made in an atmosphere of hatred and suspicion which has to be experienced to be believed. Such is the bitterness that even to question the " game-book " figures of murdered Muslims is considered an act of treachery. For suggesting, from personal observation, that the figure of ro,000 dead in Delhi in September was an exaggeration, and that the killed did not exceed 2,000, I almost lost my reputation for impartiality and was suspected in Karachi of having been " got at " or hoodwinked by the other side. Whether the Muslim case is founded on fact or fanaticism or a mixture of both, that goodwill and confidence between the two Governments are completely lacking is proved by the refusal of the Supreme Commander, Field-Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, to carry on any longer in their absence. A situation of which he despairs 'is desperate indeed, for no British official in the last hundred years has known the country better or given himself more unspar- ingly to the service of her peoples.
My own view is that, if bitter feeling exists among Muslims, it is not surprising. Every refugee from the Punjab or Delhi has his own atrocity story, but none could be more horrifying than those of impartial eye-witnesses. I travelled home with a British staff officer who had himself taken out of a train a few miles from Amritsar Station, counted and buried with bulldozers, 2,700 Muslim men, women and children killed by Sikhs. Other British officers of the Boundary Force, infantrymen who fought all the way from Keren through the Western Desert to Cassino and beyond, have told me that the three weeks from August z5th in the Punjab were worse than anything we experienced in war. They blamed the Sikhs most. I myself saw something of what was done by Sikhs in Delhi. Corn- ing on top of the appalling massacres in Bihar, where whole Muslim communities were pitilessly done to death, this recent butchery would have embittered even a less militant race.
Nor is it any answer to say that Muslims have been guilty of equally horrible atrocities upon Sikh and Hindu refugees from the Western Punjab. So they have ; but to my mind there is no doubt who started the mass killings or who committed most of them. I was in Lahore in January and February when the Muslim League launched its civil disobedience movement against the Khizar Ministry of the Punjab. Whatever may be said of this means of drawing attention to one's grievances, it is not for the Congress, the inventors and prime exponents of the method, to decry it. If resort to it is ever justified, it was justified on this occasion. The strongest single party in the Legislature, the Muslim League, was not only denied the opportunity of forming a Government, but was prevented from stating its case in the Assembly (summoned only to pass the Budget), and from holding public meetings outside.
Greatly to its credit, it succeeded in keeping the movement corn-. pletely " non-violent " until the ministry fell. It was then invited to take office, and the Sikhs were offered seats in a coalition cabinet. Supported by the Congress Hindus, they refused all co-operation with the Muslim League, and Master Tara Singh, their leader, made a speech in which he openly talked of reconquering the Punjab with the sword. Communal tension increased ; rioting started in Amritsar and Lahore, and the train was thus laid which led to the great explosion in August. It is undeniable that from the day of Master Tara Singh's speech, if not before, the Sikhs began their preparations. In making them they had the covert assistance of the rulers of some at least of the Sikh States, who supplied them with arms. It is equally certain that the massacre of Muslims in Delhi in September was the result of a carefully organised Sikh conspiracy, and was not, as the Hindu Press tried to make out, a spontaneous act of revenge by Sikh refugees from the Western Punjab. Refugees do not carry Sten guns. If the Government of India was, not aware of what was being hatched it must have been very badly served. If the Sikhs in Delhi have since been disarmed, there was no sign of it when I left India.
As to the other Muslim charges, it is a fact that special trains were burnt as soon as the service started ; British, officials engaged in the negotiations between the two Governments confirm That the bania (money-lender) attitude of the Indian representatives was most marked ; military equipment has not been handed over, though this may have been unavoidable ; letters, telegrams and money orders for Muslims in India have not been delivered ; -Pakistan has been flooded with refugees and, in spite of the assurances of Pandit Nehru and the entreaties of Mr. Gandhi, it would be a bold Muslim who would sleep quietly in his bed in Delhi today. At the same time there has been a huge and quite unnecessary exodus of Hindus and Sikhs from Karachi, where all is quiet, with consequent dislocation of business, and many of those leaving the place have admitted that hookum hai (it is an order). There is thus some substance in the Muslim case.
On the top of all this it was not reassuring to hear Pandit Nehru denouncing foreign correspondents for reporting what they saw in the Punjab or Mr. Patel ending an appeal for communal tolerance with the announcement that they would know how to deal with the enemy when the time came. Meanwhile, for suppression of news, distortion of facts and provocative writing the Hindu Press has shown that it has nothing to learn from the worst of the Muslim vernacular papers and has surpassed even its performances against the British. As a result the hatred of Hindus for Muslims is just as great as that of Muslims for Hindus or Sikhs. For their part the Sikhs talk openly of conquering Delhi as well as the Punjab, and the Hindus may yet find that they have let loose forces which they cannot control. Through the premature partition of the Indian Army the one unifying and disciplined element in the country has disappeared and with it the greatest safeguard against civil war. That either side would deliberately embark upon it at present is unlikely. Pakistan is cer- tainly in no state to do so. But that the country may drift into it, declared or undeclared, is only too possible if emotional tension is not relaxed, if Pakistan encourages the tribesmen or India the Sikhs and if the political leaders of the Indian Union cannot bring them- selves to accept, without mental reservations, the separate existence of Pakistan. It is to be hoped that the talks now in progress in Delhi will end in something more than talk.
Previous page
