Muslim League

The volume in hand is a reprint of an old book compiled in 1947) by Sardar Gurbachan Singh Talib, Principal of the Lyallpur Khalsa College, Jullundur, and published in 1950 by the Shiromani Gurudwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC). It records the story of 7-mil-lion Hindus and Sikhs who were uprooted from their homes in the West Punjab, the North-Western Frontier, Sind and parts of Kashmir. It tells the story of political parleys that preceded this event, their inevitable failure, and the barbarity that immediately followed -barbarity that had elements of pre-planning. The book records the atrocities of this period – the carnage, killings, abductions and forced conversions that took place particularly in 1946-47, forcing Hindus and Sikhs to leave their hearths and homes and start on the “biggest mass migration of humanity,” as the author describes it.
At the end of the book, the author gives an Appendix, 100 pages of about 50 eye-witness accounts of those atrocities. It contains statements of those who saw themselves attacked, their houses burnt, their kith and kin killed, their womenfolk abducted but who themselves survived to relate their account. The section also includes press reports and other first-hand accounts. For example, one report which appeared in The Statesman of April 15, 1947 narrates an event that took place in village Thoha Khalsa of Rawalpindi District. It is a story of tears and shame and also of great sacrifice and heroism. The story tells us how the Hindu-Sikh population of this tiny village was attacked by 3000-strong armed Muslims, how badly outweaponed and outnumbered, the besieged had to surrender, but how their women numbering 90 in order to “evade inglorious surrender” and save their honour jumped into a well “following the example of Indian women of by-gone days.” Only three of them were saved. “There was not enough water in the well to drown them all,” the report adds. The author also gives an 85-page long “list of atrocities,” date by date and region by region, that took place during the months from mid-December 1946 to the end of August 1947 And these represent only “a small fraction of what really happened,” and they have to be multiplied “a hundred-fold or more…to get the right proportions,” the author says.