Why and how "Punjabi Nation" was divided in 1947?

 Why and how "Punjabi Nation" was divided in 1947?

Punjabi is the 9th biggest nation and Punjabi speaking population of the world. The Punjabi nation is the 3rd biggest nation of South Asia. Punjabi Muslims are the 3rd largest ethnic community in the Muslim Ummah. At the time of liberating the subcontinent, the United States and Britain feared that Punjab would be a neighbor of the Soviet Union. Therefore, after the liberation of the subcontinent, the Punjabi Nation should not end the US and British monopoly on the Indian Ocean by partnering with the Soviet Union and helping the Soviet Union to reach the Indian Ocean region.

At the behest of Winston Churchill, Lord Archibald Wavell devised a secret plan to divide India. After World War II, Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom strongly opposed the liberation of British India without partition. His analysis was that; Jawaharlal Nehru is a supporter of the Soviet Union. Therefore, it is likely that it will allow the Soviet Union to reach the port of Karachi for hot water. As a result, the Soviet Union would have an easier way to reach the Indian Ocean and the Middle East. On the contrary, the Muslim leadership of UP, CP demanding Pakistan is pro-Western. Therefore, the Muslim leadership of Pakistan, formed on the basis of Islam, will resist Moscow.

After World War II, the "Great Game" played out between Britain and the Soviet Union, to increase the influence, turned to the Cold War and Winston Churchill was trying to counter the Soviet Union, rival to United States and Britain's. But the people of British India and especially the Punjabis had to pay a heavy price for it. Because, the British plan was to liberate British India by creating Domains of India and Pakistan as well as to destroy the Punjabi Nation. To carry on the plan, the Muslim leadership of UP, CP demanding Pakistan was patronised, facilitated and motivated. Therefore;

01. All India Muslim League won Muslim constituencies in General elections held in British India in December 1945 to elect members of the Central Legislative Assembly and the Council of State, especially defeated the Punjabi political party Unionist in Punjab, which was the secular and ruling party in Punjab from 1937. This election proved to be a strategic victory for Jinnah and the partitionists. Even though Congress won, the League had united the Muslim vote and as such it gained the negotiating power to seek a separate Muslim homeland as it became clear that a united India would prove highly unstable. The elected members later formed the Constituent Assembly of India.

02. All India Muslim League decided to celebrate "Direct Action Day" in Calcutta on 16 August 1946, to assert its demand for a separate homeland for Indian Muslims out of certain northwestern and eastern provinces in colonial India. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, leader of the All India Muslim League, said that he wanted “either a divided India or a destroyed India”. Against a backdrop of communal tension, the protest triggered massive riots in Calcutta. More than 4,000 people lost their lives and 100,000 residents were left homeless in Calcutta within 72 hours. This violence sparked off further religious riots in the surrounding regions of Noakhali, Bihar, United Provinces (modern Uttar Pradesh), Punjab, and the North Western Frontier Province. These events sowed the seeds for the eventual Partition of India. Thousands of non-combatants including women and children were killed or injured by mobs, supported by the All India Muslim League. Bonds of friendship, a sense of community and communal harmony were the first casualties of this terrible war.

03. On 2nd March 1947, the Unionist Party government in Punjab was dismissed and the All India Muslim League failed to declare a parliamentary majority, leading to the imposition of Governor Rule. 

04. On 4th and 5th March 1947, the first attacks against Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi occurred in Lahore and Amritsar. 

05. On the same dates, Muslim League-led mobs fell with determination and full preparations on the helpless Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis scattered in the villages of Multan, Rawalpindi, Campbellpur, Jhelum and Sargodha. 

06. The murderous mobs were well supplied with arms, such as daggers, swords, spears and fire-arms. A former civil servant mentioned in his autobiography that weapon supplies had been sent from NWFP and money was supplied by Delhi-based politicians.

07. They had bands of stabbers and their auxiliaries, who covered the assailant, ambushed the victim and if necessary disposed of his body. These bands were subsidized monetarily by the Muslim League, and cash payments were made to individual assassins based on the numbers of Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis killed. 

08. There were also regular patrolling parties in jeeps which went about sniping and picking off any stray Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi.

09. On 5th March, Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi students of Rawalpindi took out a procession protesting against the Muslim attempt at the formation of a communal (Muslim League) Ministry in the Punjab, and the police firing on the non-violent procession of Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi students. This procession was also attacked by the Muslim Leaguers. There was a free fight in which the Muslims got the worst of it. 

10. Then a huge Muslim mob from the countryside, incited for attack on Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis by the Pir of Golra, a Muslim religious head and a leader of this area, fell upon the town.

11. The attack in Rawalpindi villages began on the 7th of March, 1947 after reaching tribal Pathans for waging jihad and continued non-stop for weeks, involving village after village, wherever any Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis were to be found. When one area was rid of its Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi inhabitants, the war on Hindu Punjabis and Sikh Punjabis spread to another area, and so on, till by the end of March, the surviving Hindu Punjabi and Sikh Punjabi populations of Rawalpindi, Campbellpur and Jhelum Districts had all been transferred in a destitute state into refugee camps, which were established all over the Punjab and Sikh princely states.

12. In July and August 1947, massacres began against Muslim Punjabis in East Punjab in response to the massacre caused by the jihad waged by the tribal Pathans in West Punjab.

13. This plan was carried out through the intellectual conspiracy and political hypocrisy of the Urdu-Speaking Muslims of Uttar Pradesh who were the leaders and planners of the All India Muslim League and executed by the Pathan and Arabic background residents of West Punjab and tribal Pathans of NWFP.

14. In the context of the Radcliffe Line, a rough border had already been drawn under Viceroy Lord Archibald Wavell before the new Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, took over the charge in February 1947.

The partition of British India was in fact a fulfillment of the long-term plan of the United States and Britain for their own interests rather than the interests of the people of British India. The British wanted to serve the long-term interests of the United States and Britain by dividing British India through staging riots on the basis of religion. That's why at the time of leaving subcontinent by the British;

1. On the one hand, by dividing the Punjab on religious grounds, the Muslim Punjabi majority areas of Punjab were included in Pakistan and the Sikh Punjabi and Hindu Punjabi majority areas were included in India.

2. Second, by conspiring riots among the Punjabis on religious grounds, 2 million Punjabis were killed and 20 million Punjabis were devastated. In order to divide the Punjabi Nation, Sikh Punjabis and Hindu Punjabis can be transferred to India and Muslim Punjabis can be transferred to Pakistan.

*PNF SINDH*