Sajjad Azhar
The Bollywood film “Main Vaapas Aaunga” was released in June this year. The story revolves around a young Sikh man who migrates from Sargodha and falls in love with his Muslim classmate. But before their relationship can lead to marriage, Partition takes place.
The young Sikh’s devastated family boards a train for India. He does not want to leave, but his family forces him to go. As they depart, everyone believes that the situation will eventually return to normal and that they will come back.
The film resembles many other movies based on stories born out of the communal violence that accompanied Partition in Punjab. These stories are, in many ways, a lament for Punjab. They reflect the pain not so much of the Partition of India as of the Partition of Punjab itself.
There were several major cities in Punjab that were destined to become part of Pakistan but had non-Muslim majorities.
When the Partition plan was announced on June 3, the non-Muslim population in what would become Pakistan found itself in a state of uncertainty. Many were unwilling to accept that even if Partition took place, they would have to leave their homes and possessions.
Then the riots erupted.
It seemed as though, at the very moment the boundary was being drawn, it had also been decided that the non-Muslims on one side would move to the other, while Muslims on the other side would move in the opposite direction.
This could never have happened voluntarily on such a massive scale. The violence accomplished what would otherwise have seemed impossible. But the price of moving roughly 15 million people from one side to the other was the loss of approximately two million lives.
It remains one of the most horrifying episodes in human history. The eyewitnesses were the fathers and grandfathers of our generation.
We often say that Muslims were a majority in Gurdaspur but that the district was awarded to India. Yet we do not always remember that there were also areas in what is now Pakistan where non-Muslims were in a majority but which nevertheless became part of Pakistan.
The boundary-making process was not based solely on religious majorities. It was certainly considered that Muslim-majority areas should go to Pakistan and non-Muslim-majority areas to India, but another consideration was to ensure that the new borders did not become geographically unworkable or fragmented.
The dilemma that led to the Partition of Punjab and Bengal
The Lahore Resolution stated that the proposed Pakistan would comprise the north-western and eastern zones of India. It did not specify provinces, nor did it explain what would happen to areas within those regions where non-Muslims were in a majority.
However, on November 8, 1945, while explaining his concept of Pakistan, Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah said that, geographically, Pakistan would consist of Balochistan, the North-West Frontier Province, the whole of Punjab, the whole of Bengal and the province of Assam.
At the time, the religious composition of these provinces was approximately as follows:
Muslims were a majority in these provinces, but there was also a very substantial non-Muslim population.
For example, the provinces that Jinnah was demanding for Pakistan contained more than 55 million Muslims. When Hindus and Sikhs are combined, their population came to almost 38 million.
In other words, in the territories being demanded for Pakistan, the Muslim population exceeded the combined Hindu and Sikh population by only around 7.5 million.
This was one of the reasons the British eventually decided that Punjab and Bengal would have to be divided if Pakistan was to be created along religious-majority lines.
The logic was to include Muslim-majority districts in Pakistan and non-Muslim-majority districts in India.
In Madras, the United Provinces, Bihar, the Central Provinces, Assam, Orissa, Ajmer, Marwar and Delhi, Hindus were overwhelmingly dominant. Sindh, Balochistan and the North-West Frontier Province, meanwhile, had Muslim majorities.
The real problem was Bengal and Punjab, where the populations of Muslims and Hindus were relatively close, with only a few percentage points separating them.
The cities where the population formula was not the only consideration
Journalist and author Kuldip Nayar once interviewed Sir Cyril Radcliffe and asked him why Lahore had been awarded to Pakistan. Nayar reportedly pointed out that Lahore had been a centre of Sikh power since the time of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and that Sikhs had significant property and commercial interests in the city.
According to Nayar’s account, Radcliffe replied that he had initially been inclined to award Lahore to India, but then realised that Pakistan would otherwise have no major city because he had already awarded Calcutta to India.
Radcliffe may have made the remark in jest. After all, the boundary was not drawn simply according to the religious composition of individual cities.
Muslims constituted only 23.59 percent of the population of Calcutta, whereas they were a majority in both Lahore city and Lahore district. Although non-Muslims dominated the commercial, political and social life of Lahore, Muslims accounted for approximately 65 percent of the city’s population and 60.62 percent of the population of the district.
However, three major cities of Punjab—Lyallpur (present-day Faisalabad), Sargodha and Rawalpindi—had non-Muslim majorities.
Non-Muslims accounted for approximately 56.21 percent of Rawalpindi’s population, and around 67 percent in both Lyallpur and Sargodha.
In two other major Punjab cities, Gujranwala and Multan, the difference was narrower, but Muslims still formed the majority. Muslims constituted 57.16 percent of the population of Multan city and 54.30 percent of Gujranwala.
When the populations of the respective districts are considered, however, the Muslim proportion rose to approximately two-thirds.
The complicated case of Gurdaspur
Gurdaspur presented a particularly complex situation.
Although Muslims constituted only about one percentage point more than the non-Muslim population of the district as a whole, Muslims formed 52.16 percent of the population of Gurdaspur tehsil, 55.07 percent in Batala and 51.32 percent in Shakargarh.
Only Pathankot had a Muslim minority, where Muslims constituted 38.89 percent of the population.
Yet only Shakargarh was incorporated into Pakistan, while the other three tehsils went to India.
The explanation most commonly given even today is that this arrangement was made to provide India with access to Kashmir.
Muslims were also a majority in the tehsils of Jalandhar, Firozpur, Zira and Nakodar, but these areas too became part of India.
Some historians and experts argue that communications and the canal irrigation system were also considered when the boundary was drawn. Had these areas been awarded to Pakistan, they contend, it could have created serious logistical and administrative complications.
Why did India emerge stronger from Partition?
Before Partition, there were around 560 princely states in British India. Collectively, they covered approximately 45 percent of the total area of the subcontinent and contained around 24 percent of its population.
Fifteen of these states had areas exceeding 10,000 square miles, while around 202 states were smaller than 10 square miles.
At the time of Partition, the territory of British India under direct British rule covered approximately 865,446 square miles.
Following independence, and after the integration of the princely states, India’s territory expanded to approximately 1,221,072 square miles.
That meant post-independence India was about 355,626 square miles larger than the territory of British India under direct rule. In percentage terms, the India that emerged after independence was approximately 41 percent larger than the directly ruled British Indian territory.
According to the 1941 Census, the total population of British India was approximately 389 million, of whom around 95 million lived in the princely states. Muslims constituted only about 15 million of the population of those states.
At the time, many Muslims themselves opposed the creation of Pakistan because they feared that Partition would weaken Muslims in the subcontinent, while India could emerge stronger than British India had been.
Apart from states such as Kashmir, Bahawalpur, Kalat, Khairpur, Lasbela and Swat, where Muslims were in a majority, most of the other princely states were ultimately absorbed into India.
India subsequently also took control of Kashmir, meaning that a large Muslim-majority princely state did not become part of Pakistan.
This raises a question that many critics continue to ask: Why did the political leadership of the time overlook these crucial geographical and demographic realities?
The consequences were borne by Muslims on the other side of the new border and by non-Muslims on this side—people who left their homes believing that the upheaval might be temporary and who departed saying:
“I will come back.”
But none of them could return.
The tragedy runs so deep that even 79 years later, its pain has still not diminished.
