Burhan Wani
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No I know Subedar Afsar Khan, Captain Khan Muhammad KHan, Subedar Allah Ditta khan.
WHo was he Freedom fighter?
1947 Muslim massacre in Jammu
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WHo was he Freedom fighter?
Burhan Wani
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Sudhans were from martial race too.
What was the name of his elder from AKRF .?
Let me give you hint.
Khan of mong?
Lt Afsar khan
Sub mansab? Lt Col shair
Capt Bostan.
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dadeechi
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Premeditated ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs The violence during the Partition forced nearly twenty million people to cross the border: Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan to India and Muslims from India to Pakistan. The Muslim League, it appears, not only wanted a separate homeland, they also wanted it purely for Muslims, cleansed of the infidels: Hindus and Sikhs. The violence they perpetrated during the course of the Partition, it appears, was a premeditated stratagem, carefully orchestrated by the Muslim League, to ethnically cleanse the non-Muslims from Pakistan. On Muslim League’s incitement of the ethnic-cleansing of non-Muslims, the Times of London wrote, ‘League’s reckless propaganda causes Punjab tragedy.’580 The incitement and demagoguery of Jinnah and other top Muslim League leaders, argue Collins and Lapierre, convinced Muslims that ‘in Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, Hindu moneylenders, shopkeepers and zamindars (Sikh landlords) would disappear… if Pakistan is ours, so too are shops, farms, houses and factories of the Hindus and Sikhs.’581 Collins and Lapierre add: ‘The central Post Office in Lahore was flooded with thousands of postcards addressed to the Hindus and Sikhs. They depicted men and women being raped and slaughtered. On the back was the message: ‘This is what is happening to our Sikh and Hindu brothers and sisters at the hands of Muslims when they take over.’ These postcards were part of a campaign of psychological warfare, conducted by the Muslim League, to create panic among Sikhs and Hindus.’582 An officer sent a letter, dated 5 September 1947, from the Lahore Government House to Governor-General Jinnah, read: ‘‘I am telling everyone that I don’t care how the Sikhs cross the border, the great thing is to get rid of them as soon as possible. There is still little sign of the 300,000 Sikhs in Lyallpur moving, but in the end they too will have to go.’’583 Whether in Calcutta, Noakhali or the Muslim-dominated Districts of present-day Pakistan, the police—dominated by or exclusively made up of Muslims—maintained indifference and even participated in the vandalism, plunder, arson and killing. It is already noted of how Suhrawardy directed the police in the Calcutta riots. Regarding the abetment of the Bengal Muslim League government and the police in the Direct Action violence, the words of Sher-e-Bangla (Tiger of Bengal) AK Fazlul Huq,584 the CM of undivided Bengal (1937–43) and later briefly of East Pakistan (1954), are worth taking note here. In describing his eyewitness account of the savagery in an address to the Bengal Legislative Assembly on 19 September 1946, he said: ‘‘It seemed …that some modern Nadir Shah had come upon Calcutta and had given up the city to rapine, plunder and pillage. Sir, each time I tried to get in touch with police officers, I was told that I was to contact the Control Room.’’ His desperate effort to contact the police and government officials was unsuccessful. Of the government and police inaction, he added:585
579. Ibid, p. 242–85 580. Times of London, 19 March 1947 581. Collins L & Lapierre D (1975) Freedom at Midnight, Avon, New York, p. 330 582. Ibid, p. 249 583. Khosla, p. 314 584. Fazlul Huq was kicked out of the Muslim League in 1940 for advocating for an undivided India. 585. Ibid, p. 307
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‘Police officer would not listen, the Control Office would not control, the Government Houses would not listen, Sir, in these circumstances the Great Killing went on and it is undisputed that this would never have happened if the police and the military had taken strong measures on Friday, the 16th, when the trouble began. It would have been nipped in the bud that very day, and, therefore, the conclusion is inevitable that although the police may not be responsible for the origin of disturbances, they are directly responsible for the great loss of human life, and if an impartial enquiry is held and these officers can be spotted, my opinion is that they deserve to be hanged, drawn and quartered publicly, on charges of murder and abetment of murder…’
In violence during the Partition in the districts of today’s Pakistan, notes Gurbachan Singh Talib:
‘… police and military—which, by now, were entirely composed of Muslims on the Pakistan side, due to the partition of personnel and assets between India and Pakistan—gave not only active assistance and encouragement to the rampaging Muslim mobs, but often-times led them, directed their operations, and finished off the job of murder where the mobs could not succeed single-handed. By August, the non-Muslim populations of Lahore had been reduced to only a fraction of their former numbers. But still more than 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs remained in Lahore.’586
According to a Civil and Military Gazette report, the Sikhs, in particular, had refused to leave Lahore saying that Lahore was their home. This refusal proved calamitous for them as ‘the destruction, devastation, and massacre soon rained on the Hindus and Sikhs and nine thousand of their corpses were left to rot on the streets of Lahore causing a terrible stench.’587 According to Talib, on 10 August 1947, almost all Hindu and Sikh localities were set alight. Fires were raging in Chune Mandi, Bazaz Hatta, Sua Bazar, Lohari Gate, Mohalla Sathan and Mozang. Everywhere, police led the attacks in non-Muslim areas. Describing the terrible massacre in Lahore in early August 1947, the special correspondent of The Hindustan Times reported: ‘‘Seventy per cent of the casualties of the last three weeks in West Punjab were inflicted by the communally maddened troops and policemen. The victims of their bullets numbered thousands. The massacre at Sheikhupura, which was their handiwork, puts into shade the slaughter at Jalianwala Bagh.’’588 In fact, from the very beginning, police abetted and even participated in the violence and vandalism against Hindus and Sikhs on the Pakistan side. On 5 March 1947, a Muslim mob, assisted by National Guards, started looting non-Muslim shops at Rang Mahal in Lahore. When the Hindus and Sikhs offered resistance, the Muslim Sub-Inspector arrived with a police-force and opened fire on the defenders. When a young Hindu man argued with the Sub-Inspector, the latter shot him dead.589 When Muslims unleashed violence in Amritsar on 6 March 1946, the Hindu policemen were replaced by Muslim ones in the violencestricken area; on their complicity to the violence records Khosla, ‘Muslim Magistrates assisted by Muslim police officials… lent their support and connivance to the miscreants.’ Similarly, in the violence in Rawalpindi, the Magistrate and the police offered indifference and abetment. When a senior Sikh Advocate asked the Magistrate for police assistance, records Justice Khosla, ‘the Additional District Magistrate accused him of spreading rumors and added that he was endangering his own life.’590 Such was the response of the authority and law enforcement agencies in the pre-Partition violence in Muslim-dominated areas. In the course of the Partition in August 1947, the participation of the police and government authority in the 586. Talib, op cit 587. Ibid 588. The Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Punjab was the worst violence committed by the British in the course of Independence movement of India. It caused 379 deaths according to British records, while up to 1,000 in Indian claims.
589. Khosla, p. 101–02
590. Ibid, p. 103,106
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renewed, intensified violence became much more prominent, an example of which has been cited already. In massacre of the Hindus and Sikhs of Lahore in August 1947, the Baluch Regiment took a very prominent part, while the District Magistrate of Jhang, Pir Mubarak Ali Shah, was seen firing from a rifle and leading the mob.591 On the Indian side of the Partition, authorities mostly tried to curtail the violence. On the disparity in responses of authorities on the two sides of the border, notes Khosla, ‘while the Government of India and the East Punjab Government mobilized all their resources to quell the disturbances, the West Punjab Government gave encouragement to the rowdy elements by many official and unofficial acts.’592 Nonetheless, some police officers, particularly in East Punjab (Ambala area for example)—undoubtedly instigated by what their Muslim counterparts were committing on the Hindus and Sikhs on the other side of the border—showed indifference and connivance to the Sikh retaliation; some of them even participated in the murder and looting. Such incidents were, however, rather infrequent and a number of such culprit police officers were arrested. No such actions were taken against the culprit police and government officials in Pakistan.
Ethnic cleansing of Muslims As noted already, on the India side of the Partition, ethic cleansing occurred mainly in East Punjab. The very late Sikh retaliation against Muslims under utmost ongoing provocations cannot be judged properly without taking the historical context into account. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, a contemporary of Mughal invader Babur, witnessed latter’s mass slaughter of Hindus and destruction of their temples. Nanak, giving a vivid account of Babur’s vandalism in Aimanabad in his Babur Vani, denounced the invader’s barbarism in no uncertain terms. He also described Muslim cruelties against the Hindus in the form of a complaint to God, as enshrined in the Granth Sahib, the Sikh Scripture:
‘Having lifted Islam to the head, You have engulfed Hindustan in dread... Such cruelties have they inflicted, and yet Your mercy remains unmoved... Should the strong attack the strong, the heart does not burn. But when the strong crush the helpless, surely the One who was to protect them has to be called to account... O’ Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed and yet You do not pay heed....’ (Mahla 1:36).
Islamic cruelties were later to fall upon the followers of Guru Nanak, too. Emperor Jahangir condemned Sikh Guru Arjun Dev to torture-until-death on the accusation of supporting a revolt, led by Prince Khusrau, son of Jahangir. Later on, ordered by Aurangzeb, Guru Tegh Bahadur Singh was tortured in the cruelest manner before being beheaded as he prayed, for complaining against forced conversion of the Kashmiri Hindus. In 1705, Aurangzeb attacked Guru Gobind Singh (son of Guru Tegh Bahadur) and his followers, and besieged them in their fortress. Having given the promise of safe passage, Aurangzeb’s army treacherous fell upon Gobind Singh’s followers when they came out, decimating them and their family, including Gobind Singh’s. Although the Guru survived on this occasion and was on the run, his death was eventually secured in 1707 by Wazir Khan, Aurangzeb’s governor of Sirhind (in Punjab). In the context of these cruelties, in which the Sikh prophets were put to death by Muslim rulers one after another, the Sikh resentment against Muslims can hardly be underestimated. We must recall here the Sikh assistance to the British during the Muslim-instigated Sepoy Mutiny. Then there were the Mopla Rebellion and Muslims’ insistence on dividing India (to which Sikhs were opposed), followed by Muslim brutalities starting in Calcutta affecting their Sikh coreligionists there, which spilled over the Sikhs in today’s Pakistan and even in Amritsar in East Punjab. The Sikhs in East Punjab, it appears, had realized that it was 591. Ibid, p. 122,179
592. Ibid, p. 119
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impossible to live in peace with the Muslims in their midst. This becomes abundantly clear from a statement released by Sikh leaders against the illegitimate Sikh violence in East Punjab, which read:593
‘We do not desire friendship of the Muslims and we never may befriend them. We may have to fight again but we shall fight a clean fight—man killing man. This killing of women and children and those who seek asylum must cease at once… There should be no attacks on refugee trains, convoys and caravans. We ask you to do so in the interest of your own communities, reputations, character and tradition than to save the Muslims.’
In this oddly-worded appeal for calm, there was also a call to fight only if the Muslim men take it up, without harming the women and children, and those seeking refuge. Evidently, there was, in this appeal, an underlying angst against Muslims, in which the historical persecution of the Sikhs by Muslim invaders and rulers and the ongoing Muslim brutality of Sikhs had played their part. Muslims also suffered heavy casualties and ethnic cleansing in the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur, which were outside of British control. The ethnic Muslims, called Meos, lived in these fiefdoms in large numbers. The Hindu violence, according to an estimation of Ian Copland, killed 30,000 Meos and drove about 100,000 of them out. However, this violence in Rajasthan took place at a later stage. The Hindu violence was provoked, they claimed, for ‘The killings of Hindus at Noakhali and Punjab had to be avenged,’ notes Copland. Who instigated the violence is not known as Copland writes: ‘Separating "aggressors" from "victims" in this context is difficult, perhaps even pointless. Both sides were culpable.’594 The aggressive violence unleashed by Meos on Hindu villages in the outskirts of Delhi had likely instigated the violence in neighboring Alwar. According to Khosla, ‘In some villages (of Delhi), trouble was started by the Meo residents. Hindu villages were attacked and burnt down. The Meos were ultimately driven out and many of them were wiped out in the neighboring State of Alwar.’595 There was also a separatist movement among the Meos; they wanted to create an independent Muslim state, called Meostan, in the heart of Rajasthan. In the course of the Partition, estimated 600,000 to two million people died; about a hundred thousand predominantly Hindu and Sikh women were raped; a similar number were enslaved and carried away. Likely a few million Hindus and Sikhs were converted to Islam on the pain of death, some 95 percent of the 400,000 Hindus in Noakhali alone. Of the casualties, the numbers were roughly evened out between Muslims and non-Muslims. The heavy casualties Muslims suffered were mainly in East Punjab. The Partition also led to displacement of an estimated nineteen million people across the borders. Based on the 1951 Census of displaced persons, some 14.5 million people crossed the border on the Punjab side of the Partition. Of them, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India, while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after the Partition. On the Bengal side of the Partition, 3.5 million Hindus moved from East Pakistan to India, while only 700,000 Muslims migrated in the opposite direction.596 It should be understood that the Muslim migration was generally of more willing nature since they overwhelmingly wanted a separate Muslim homeland, and that migration to a Muslim land from the infidel-dominated Dar alHarb (e.g., Hindu India) was widely promoted by Muslim organizations in their separatist campaign. In terms of property, the Hindu and Sikh loss much surpassed that of Muslims. The Hindus and Sikhs all over India were wealthy communities particularly in business and industrial establishments. The Hindus in East Bengal prior to the Partition, although a minority, possessed 80 percent of the national wealth. According to Kamra, ‘The majority of the buildings and properties in each town of East Bengal, in some 593. Ibid, p. 288 594. Copland I (1998) The Further Shore of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947, Past and Present, Oxford, 160, p. 203–39 595. Khosla, p. 284 596. Partition of India, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
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cases more than 85 percent of the urban properties, belonged to Hindus.’597 In NWFP, the minorities (Hindus, Sikhs, Christians) constituted only 8.2 percent of the population, but the Hindus alone paid 80 percent of the income-tax of the province; in Lahore, non-Muslim minorities owned 80 percent of the property.598 The Muslim violence, it seems, was unleashed with a premeditated intent of capturing the huge Hindu and Sikh properties and businesses by driving them out. The Muslim League propaganda that if Pakistan was theirs, so were the properties of non-Muslims has been cited above. Bengal Congress leader Kiron Shankar Roy, in a press statement on 22 July 1947, referred to the expectation of East Bengal Muslims as thus: ‘‘There is a notion among ordinary Muslims in the Eastern Pakistan region that after August 15, the houses and land of the Hindus there will automatically pass into the possession of Muslims, and that the Hindus will be a sort of subject race under the Muslims of that area.’’599 This attitude applied more emphatically to the rampaging Muslims of Punjab, where ‘each one of them thought that he had become a Nawab (provincial governor).’600
Who bears the responsibility?
Clearly, the responsibility for the great human tragedy and suffering, engendered by the Partition, falls mostly on Muslims. They started the secessionist movement in the first place; and they were generally the instigators of the violence and eviction that followed. They started a campaign of gory violence a year ahead of the Partition in order to press their demand for creating Pakistan. They engaged in much more vicious violence as their demand for Pakistan was met and the Partition eventually took place. The Direct Action, according to Muslim League and mosque propaganda, was a Jihad, the re-enactment of Muhammad’s Jihadi Battle of Badr. The overall motive of the Muslim violence was to cleanse the newly created Islamic "Land of the Pure" from the filthy infidels. This fitted perfectly well with Prophet Muhammad’s example of founding the first Islamic state in Arabia by mass eviction and slaughter of the Jews and extermination of the Polytheists. In the course of the Partition in August, riots took place everywhere inside West Pakistan. In East Pakistan (East Bengal), violence was tactfully prevented in the days of the Partition, but harrowing mob violence against Hindus returned in February 1950. This violence was instigated, over Pakistan’s failed attack in Kashmir, by the Pakistani press, radio and Muslim leaders—calling Hindus "saboteurs", "enemy agents", "fifth columnists" and "disloyal elements" amongst all kinds of false propaganda. On February 6 and 7, Radio Pakistan announced: ‘‘Brethren! You have heard about the inhuman atrocities that are now being perpetrated in India and West Bengal. Will you not gather strength?’’ Such false stories were also splashed over the pages of newspapers in East Bengal. Pakistan Radio announced that 10,000 Muslims were killed in Calcutta, while Pashban, a Bengali daily in Dhaka, raised the figure to 100,000.601 Such false propaganda instigated Muslims to unleash harrowing mob violence against Hindus all over Eastern Pakistan. Mass murder, rapes, abduction of women, mass conversion, arson and plunder took place, which cannot be accommodated here in detail. For an example, Jawaharlal Nehru gave a figure of Hindu casualty of 600 to 1,000 in Dhaka, which was lower than the true figure; in the villages of Rajapur Police Station, some 150 Hindus were killed and the rest were converted to Islam; some 1.5 million Hindus fled from East Bengal to India, according to a figure given by Nehru.602
597. Kamra, p. 3
598. Khosla, p. 120,258
599. Hindustan Times, 22 July 1947 600. Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, 30 December 1948
601. Kamra, p. 55,57
602. Ibid, p. 59,66,105
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The Hindus and Sikhs did not incite violence proactively; but they merely, and rather belatedly, reacted in kind. Inside India, in the course of the Partition in August 1947, besides violence in East Punjab, Delhi, Alwar and Bharatpur, riots also took place in Aligarh, Bombay and Jammu and Kashmir amongst others. In these places, Muslims had strong presence and these riots were initiated and/or instigated by them. In Kashmir, for example, the Pathan Muslims enslaved the young Hindu women, carried them away and sold in the markets of Jhelum District in Pakistan.603 The Hindu and Sikh violence, in most cases, was retaliation against the Muslim ones, including in East Punjab, where Muslims suffered worst Sikh retaliations. Muslims’ unprovoked harrowing violence—in Calcutta, Noakhali, West Punjab, NWFP, and even, in Amritsar in East Punjab among other places—had, undoubtedly, tested the patience of the Sikhs and Hindus to an utmost degree, and instigated them to engage in violence in like manners. Overall, the Hindus and Sikhs showed great restraint; most places inside India, where Muslims were minority, remained largely calm. Undoubtedly, the separatist Muslims should bear almost the entire responsibility for the Partitionrelated violence and bloodbath: firstly, for their demand of a separate state, and secondly, for inciting and initiating unprovoked violence and bloodbath that took place. The British rulers and the Hindus and Sikhs (including Hindutva groups) deserve very little share of the blame.
http://www.islam-watch.org/books/islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery.pdf
579. Ibid, p. 242–85 580. Times of London, 19 March 1947 581. Collins L & Lapierre D (1975) Freedom at Midnight, Avon, New York, p. 330 582. Ibid, p. 249 583. Khosla, p. 314 584. Fazlul Huq was kicked out of the Muslim League in 1940 for advocating for an undivided India. 585. Ibid, p. 307
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‘Police officer would not listen, the Control Office would not control, the Government Houses would not listen, Sir, in these circumstances the Great Killing went on and it is undisputed that this would never have happened if the police and the military had taken strong measures on Friday, the 16th, when the trouble began. It would have been nipped in the bud that very day, and, therefore, the conclusion is inevitable that although the police may not be responsible for the origin of disturbances, they are directly responsible for the great loss of human life, and if an impartial enquiry is held and these officers can be spotted, my opinion is that they deserve to be hanged, drawn and quartered publicly, on charges of murder and abetment of murder…’
In violence during the Partition in the districts of today’s Pakistan, notes Gurbachan Singh Talib:
‘… police and military—which, by now, were entirely composed of Muslims on the Pakistan side, due to the partition of personnel and assets between India and Pakistan—gave not only active assistance and encouragement to the rampaging Muslim mobs, but often-times led them, directed their operations, and finished off the job of murder where the mobs could not succeed single-handed. By August, the non-Muslim populations of Lahore had been reduced to only a fraction of their former numbers. But still more than 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs remained in Lahore.’586
According to a Civil and Military Gazette report, the Sikhs, in particular, had refused to leave Lahore saying that Lahore was their home. This refusal proved calamitous for them as ‘the destruction, devastation, and massacre soon rained on the Hindus and Sikhs and nine thousand of their corpses were left to rot on the streets of Lahore causing a terrible stench.’587 According to Talib, on 10 August 1947, almost all Hindu and Sikh localities were set alight. Fires were raging in Chune Mandi, Bazaz Hatta, Sua Bazar, Lohari Gate, Mohalla Sathan and Mozang. Everywhere, police led the attacks in non-Muslim areas. Describing the terrible massacre in Lahore in early August 1947, the special correspondent of The Hindustan Times reported: ‘‘Seventy per cent of the casualties of the last three weeks in West Punjab were inflicted by the communally maddened troops and policemen. The victims of their bullets numbered thousands. The massacre at Sheikhupura, which was their handiwork, puts into shade the slaughter at Jalianwala Bagh.’’588 In fact, from the very beginning, police abetted and even participated in the violence and vandalism against Hindus and Sikhs on the Pakistan side. On 5 March 1947, a Muslim mob, assisted by National Guards, started looting non-Muslim shops at Rang Mahal in Lahore. When the Hindus and Sikhs offered resistance, the Muslim Sub-Inspector arrived with a police-force and opened fire on the defenders. When a young Hindu man argued with the Sub-Inspector, the latter shot him dead.589 When Muslims unleashed violence in Amritsar on 6 March 1946, the Hindu policemen were replaced by Muslim ones in the violencestricken area; on their complicity to the violence records Khosla, ‘Muslim Magistrates assisted by Muslim police officials… lent their support and connivance to the miscreants.’ Similarly, in the violence in Rawalpindi, the Magistrate and the police offered indifference and abetment. When a senior Sikh Advocate asked the Magistrate for police assistance, records Justice Khosla, ‘the Additional District Magistrate accused him of spreading rumors and added that he was endangering his own life.’590 Such was the response of the authority and law enforcement agencies in the pre-Partition violence in Muslim-dominated areas. In the course of the Partition in August 1947, the participation of the police and government authority in the 586. Talib, op cit 587. Ibid 588. The Jalianwala Bagh massacre in Punjab was the worst violence committed by the British in the course of Independence movement of India. It caused 379 deaths according to British records, while up to 1,000 in Indian claims.
589. Khosla, p. 101–02
590. Ibid, p. 103,106
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renewed, intensified violence became much more prominent, an example of which has been cited already. In massacre of the Hindus and Sikhs of Lahore in August 1947, the Baluch Regiment took a very prominent part, while the District Magistrate of Jhang, Pir Mubarak Ali Shah, was seen firing from a rifle and leading the mob.591 On the Indian side of the Partition, authorities mostly tried to curtail the violence. On the disparity in responses of authorities on the two sides of the border, notes Khosla, ‘while the Government of India and the East Punjab Government mobilized all their resources to quell the disturbances, the West Punjab Government gave encouragement to the rowdy elements by many official and unofficial acts.’592 Nonetheless, some police officers, particularly in East Punjab (Ambala area for example)—undoubtedly instigated by what their Muslim counterparts were committing on the Hindus and Sikhs on the other side of the border—showed indifference and connivance to the Sikh retaliation; some of them even participated in the murder and looting. Such incidents were, however, rather infrequent and a number of such culprit police officers were arrested. No such actions were taken against the culprit police and government officials in Pakistan.
Ethnic cleansing of Muslims As noted already, on the India side of the Partition, ethic cleansing occurred mainly in East Punjab. The very late Sikh retaliation against Muslims under utmost ongoing provocations cannot be judged properly without taking the historical context into account. Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, a contemporary of Mughal invader Babur, witnessed latter’s mass slaughter of Hindus and destruction of their temples. Nanak, giving a vivid account of Babur’s vandalism in Aimanabad in his Babur Vani, denounced the invader’s barbarism in no uncertain terms. He also described Muslim cruelties against the Hindus in the form of a complaint to God, as enshrined in the Granth Sahib, the Sikh Scripture:
‘Having lifted Islam to the head, You have engulfed Hindustan in dread... Such cruelties have they inflicted, and yet Your mercy remains unmoved... Should the strong attack the strong, the heart does not burn. But when the strong crush the helpless, surely the One who was to protect them has to be called to account... O’ Lord, these dogs have destroyed this diamond-like Hindustan, (so great is their terror that) no one asks after those who have been killed and yet You do not pay heed....’ (Mahla 1:36).
Islamic cruelties were later to fall upon the followers of Guru Nanak, too. Emperor Jahangir condemned Sikh Guru Arjun Dev to torture-until-death on the accusation of supporting a revolt, led by Prince Khusrau, son of Jahangir. Later on, ordered by Aurangzeb, Guru Tegh Bahadur Singh was tortured in the cruelest manner before being beheaded as he prayed, for complaining against forced conversion of the Kashmiri Hindus. In 1705, Aurangzeb attacked Guru Gobind Singh (son of Guru Tegh Bahadur) and his followers, and besieged them in their fortress. Having given the promise of safe passage, Aurangzeb’s army treacherous fell upon Gobind Singh’s followers when they came out, decimating them and their family, including Gobind Singh’s. Although the Guru survived on this occasion and was on the run, his death was eventually secured in 1707 by Wazir Khan, Aurangzeb’s governor of Sirhind (in Punjab). In the context of these cruelties, in which the Sikh prophets were put to death by Muslim rulers one after another, the Sikh resentment against Muslims can hardly be underestimated. We must recall here the Sikh assistance to the British during the Muslim-instigated Sepoy Mutiny. Then there were the Mopla Rebellion and Muslims’ insistence on dividing India (to which Sikhs were opposed), followed by Muslim brutalities starting in Calcutta affecting their Sikh coreligionists there, which spilled over the Sikhs in today’s Pakistan and even in Amritsar in East Punjab. The Sikhs in East Punjab, it appears, had realized that it was 591. Ibid, p. 122,179
592. Ibid, p. 119
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impossible to live in peace with the Muslims in their midst. This becomes abundantly clear from a statement released by Sikh leaders against the illegitimate Sikh violence in East Punjab, which read:593
‘We do not desire friendship of the Muslims and we never may befriend them. We may have to fight again but we shall fight a clean fight—man killing man. This killing of women and children and those who seek asylum must cease at once… There should be no attacks on refugee trains, convoys and caravans. We ask you to do so in the interest of your own communities, reputations, character and tradition than to save the Muslims.’
In this oddly-worded appeal for calm, there was also a call to fight only if the Muslim men take it up, without harming the women and children, and those seeking refuge. Evidently, there was, in this appeal, an underlying angst against Muslims, in which the historical persecution of the Sikhs by Muslim invaders and rulers and the ongoing Muslim brutality of Sikhs had played their part. Muslims also suffered heavy casualties and ethnic cleansing in the princely states of Alwar and Bharatpur, which were outside of British control. The ethnic Muslims, called Meos, lived in these fiefdoms in large numbers. The Hindu violence, according to an estimation of Ian Copland, killed 30,000 Meos and drove about 100,000 of them out. However, this violence in Rajasthan took place at a later stage. The Hindu violence was provoked, they claimed, for ‘The killings of Hindus at Noakhali and Punjab had to be avenged,’ notes Copland. Who instigated the violence is not known as Copland writes: ‘Separating "aggressors" from "victims" in this context is difficult, perhaps even pointless. Both sides were culpable.’594 The aggressive violence unleashed by Meos on Hindu villages in the outskirts of Delhi had likely instigated the violence in neighboring Alwar. According to Khosla, ‘In some villages (of Delhi), trouble was started by the Meo residents. Hindu villages were attacked and burnt down. The Meos were ultimately driven out and many of them were wiped out in the neighboring State of Alwar.’595 There was also a separatist movement among the Meos; they wanted to create an independent Muslim state, called Meostan, in the heart of Rajasthan. In the course of the Partition, estimated 600,000 to two million people died; about a hundred thousand predominantly Hindu and Sikh women were raped; a similar number were enslaved and carried away. Likely a few million Hindus and Sikhs were converted to Islam on the pain of death, some 95 percent of the 400,000 Hindus in Noakhali alone. Of the casualties, the numbers were roughly evened out between Muslims and non-Muslims. The heavy casualties Muslims suffered were mainly in East Punjab. The Partition also led to displacement of an estimated nineteen million people across the borders. Based on the 1951 Census of displaced persons, some 14.5 million people crossed the border on the Punjab side of the Partition. Of them, 7,226,000 Muslims went to Pakistan from India, while 7,249,000 Hindus and Sikhs moved to India from Pakistan immediately after the Partition. On the Bengal side of the Partition, 3.5 million Hindus moved from East Pakistan to India, while only 700,000 Muslims migrated in the opposite direction.596 It should be understood that the Muslim migration was generally of more willing nature since they overwhelmingly wanted a separate Muslim homeland, and that migration to a Muslim land from the infidel-dominated Dar alHarb (e.g., Hindu India) was widely promoted by Muslim organizations in their separatist campaign. In terms of property, the Hindu and Sikh loss much surpassed that of Muslims. The Hindus and Sikhs all over India were wealthy communities particularly in business and industrial establishments. The Hindus in East Bengal prior to the Partition, although a minority, possessed 80 percent of the national wealth. According to Kamra, ‘The majority of the buildings and properties in each town of East Bengal, in some 593. Ibid, p. 288 594. Copland I (1998) The Further Shore of Partition: Ethnic Cleansing in Rajasthan 1947, Past and Present, Oxford, 160, p. 203–39 595. Khosla, p. 284 596. Partition of India, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partition_of_India
Islamic Jihad
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cases more than 85 percent of the urban properties, belonged to Hindus.’597 In NWFP, the minorities (Hindus, Sikhs, Christians) constituted only 8.2 percent of the population, but the Hindus alone paid 80 percent of the income-tax of the province; in Lahore, non-Muslim minorities owned 80 percent of the property.598 The Muslim violence, it seems, was unleashed with a premeditated intent of capturing the huge Hindu and Sikh properties and businesses by driving them out. The Muslim League propaganda that if Pakistan was theirs, so were the properties of non-Muslims has been cited above. Bengal Congress leader Kiron Shankar Roy, in a press statement on 22 July 1947, referred to the expectation of East Bengal Muslims as thus: ‘‘There is a notion among ordinary Muslims in the Eastern Pakistan region that after August 15, the houses and land of the Hindus there will automatically pass into the possession of Muslims, and that the Hindus will be a sort of subject race under the Muslims of that area.’’599 This attitude applied more emphatically to the rampaging Muslims of Punjab, where ‘each one of them thought that he had become a Nawab (provincial governor).’600
Who bears the responsibility?
Clearly, the responsibility for the great human tragedy and suffering, engendered by the Partition, falls mostly on Muslims. They started the secessionist movement in the first place; and they were generally the instigators of the violence and eviction that followed. They started a campaign of gory violence a year ahead of the Partition in order to press their demand for creating Pakistan. They engaged in much more vicious violence as their demand for Pakistan was met and the Partition eventually took place. The Direct Action, according to Muslim League and mosque propaganda, was a Jihad, the re-enactment of Muhammad’s Jihadi Battle of Badr. The overall motive of the Muslim violence was to cleanse the newly created Islamic "Land of the Pure" from the filthy infidels. This fitted perfectly well with Prophet Muhammad’s example of founding the first Islamic state in Arabia by mass eviction and slaughter of the Jews and extermination of the Polytheists. In the course of the Partition in August, riots took place everywhere inside West Pakistan. In East Pakistan (East Bengal), violence was tactfully prevented in the days of the Partition, but harrowing mob violence against Hindus returned in February 1950. This violence was instigated, over Pakistan’s failed attack in Kashmir, by the Pakistani press, radio and Muslim leaders—calling Hindus "saboteurs", "enemy agents", "fifth columnists" and "disloyal elements" amongst all kinds of false propaganda. On February 6 and 7, Radio Pakistan announced: ‘‘Brethren! You have heard about the inhuman atrocities that are now being perpetrated in India and West Bengal. Will you not gather strength?’’ Such false stories were also splashed over the pages of newspapers in East Bengal. Pakistan Radio announced that 10,000 Muslims were killed in Calcutta, while Pashban, a Bengali daily in Dhaka, raised the figure to 100,000.601 Such false propaganda instigated Muslims to unleash harrowing mob violence against Hindus all over Eastern Pakistan. Mass murder, rapes, abduction of women, mass conversion, arson and plunder took place, which cannot be accommodated here in detail. For an example, Jawaharlal Nehru gave a figure of Hindu casualty of 600 to 1,000 in Dhaka, which was lower than the true figure; in the villages of Rajapur Police Station, some 150 Hindus were killed and the rest were converted to Islam; some 1.5 million Hindus fled from East Bengal to India, according to a figure given by Nehru.602
597. Kamra, p. 3
598. Khosla, p. 120,258
599. Hindustan Times, 22 July 1947 600. Civil and Military Gazette, Lahore, 30 December 1948
601. Kamra, p. 55,57
602. Ibid, p. 59,66,105
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The Hindus and Sikhs did not incite violence proactively; but they merely, and rather belatedly, reacted in kind. Inside India, in the course of the Partition in August 1947, besides violence in East Punjab, Delhi, Alwar and Bharatpur, riots also took place in Aligarh, Bombay and Jammu and Kashmir amongst others. In these places, Muslims had strong presence and these riots were initiated and/or instigated by them. In Kashmir, for example, the Pathan Muslims enslaved the young Hindu women, carried them away and sold in the markets of Jhelum District in Pakistan.603 The Hindu and Sikh violence, in most cases, was retaliation against the Muslim ones, including in East Punjab, where Muslims suffered worst Sikh retaliations. Muslims’ unprovoked harrowing violence—in Calcutta, Noakhali, West Punjab, NWFP, and even, in Amritsar in East Punjab among other places—had, undoubtedly, tested the patience of the Sikhs and Hindus to an utmost degree, and instigated them to engage in violence in like manners. Overall, the Hindus and Sikhs showed great restraint; most places inside India, where Muslims were minority, remained largely calm. Undoubtedly, the separatist Muslims should bear almost the entire responsibility for the Partitionrelated violence and bloodbath: firstly, for their demand of a separate state, and secondly, for inciting and initiating unprovoked violence and bloodbath that took place. The British rulers and the Hindus and Sikhs (including Hindutva groups) deserve very little share of the blame.
http://www.islam-watch.org/books/islamic-jihad-legacy-of-forced-conversion-imperialism-slavery.pdf
Stag112
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Lol my question was not answered but was given a negative rating. So let me ask again to all the righteous principled upright momins frequenting this thread -
What is the time limit as per muslims here on considering massacres relevant to current political issues?
What is the time limit as per muslims here on considering massacres relevant to current political issues?
sady
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Lt Col Shair I think, his dad was Maj Anwer, anyways Mang is a big area, with Sudhnoti Dist.Sudhans were or are from martial race? I assume they still are, Sudhozai I think is the proper name tracing roots to Pathan rather than Kashmiri linkage.
Pathetic attempt to re write history, look at the sources Islam watch!
Cookie Monster
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If u r done d*ck measuring here, lets get back to topic which is a massacre of innocent PEOPLE. Nobody should have to suffer such tragedy no matter what their religion.
I don't understand why u guys always bring up massacre of Hindus in a topic like massacre of Muslims, as if one justifies another. No one is saying that it is great to massacre Hindus. It is equally bad and no sane person would try to justify it here by saying "but what about massacres of Muslims"
We can't bring these people back(Muslims, Hindus, etc.) but what we can do is learn from these tragedies and have more patience/open mind/tolerance towards each other instead of hate and try to forge a better path for the future where everyone can live in peace no matter how different they maybe in the color of their skin or their beliefs.
Burhan Wani
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Yes we are all sons of Nawab Jassi Khan Sadozai migrant from Ghazni. You can see picture of Lt Col Shair in My avatar. He was a founder of 5 AK regiment and my grandfather's cousin Sepahi Yousuf (age 16) and Lt Col Shair embraced shahadat together. If Capt Kenan was his grandson then give him a lot of hugs from my side.
dadeechi
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The book is not written by a Hindu or a Sikh or a Buddhist or a Christian or a Jew but by a Muslim.
This is not a blog post but an excerpt of a book that is available on Amazon too.
https://www.amazon.com/Islamic-Jiha...avery-ebook/dp/B002CGS1OW/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8
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