Last Days In Lahore

IT was one day in mid-June, 1947. Hot, still and silent. People were rudely shaken out of their siestas by shouts and exploding crackers. Since March, their nights had beendisturbed by sporadic gunfire and mobs yelling in the streets,hurlingslogans like missiles. From one end Muslims armed with knives and lathis shoutedNaara-e-Takbeer followed by full-throated Allah-O-Akbars. From the other end came the reply: Har Har Mahadev andBoley-se-Nihal-Sat Sri Akal. Stones were thrown at each other, abuses exchanged, and unwary pedestrians stabbed todeath. The police fired to disperse mobs, a few people were killed before peace was restored. Next morning, thepapers reported the casualties like Muslims Vs the Rest cricket scores. The scote was invariably in favour of Muslims. Thechief mason for Muslims having the upper hand was that the umpires were Muslims. Over 80 per cent of Punjab Police wasMuslim; the state government was Muslim-dominated. It was the same story all over western Punjab. Hindus and Sikhs hadbegun pulling out of Muslim-dominated towns to Lahore. And finding Lahore equally unsafe, trudged on toAmritsar and towns of eastern Punjab where Hindus and Sikhs outnumbered Muslims.

That June afternoon of 1947 remains etched in my mind. I had returned from the high courtwhen I heard the uproar. I ran up to the roof of my apartment. The sun burnt down fiercely over the city. From the centrebillowed out a huge cloud of dense, black smoke. I did not have to make guesses; the Hindu-Sikh mohalla of Shahalmi wasgoing up in flames. Muslim goondas had broken the back of non-Muslim resistance. After Shahalmi, the fight went outof the Hindus and Sikhs of Lahore. We remained mute spectators to Muslim League supporters marching in disciplinedphalanxes chanting: Pakistan ka Naara Kya/ La-Ilaha-Il-Lal-lah.

The turmoil had little impact on the well-to-do who lived around Lawrence Gardens (today's Bagh-e-Jinnah), and on either side of the canal which ran on the eastern end of Lahore. We went about in our cars to ouroffices, spent evenings playing tennis at the Cosmopolitan or the Gymkhana Club, had dinner parties where Scotch whichcost Rs 11 per bottle flowed like waters of the Ravi. In elite residential areas, the old bonhomie of Hindu-Muslim bhaibhai-ism continued. We placed a lot of faith in the Unionist government of Khizr Hayat Tiwana who had Hindus and Sikhs in hiscabinet and was strongly opposed to a separate Muslim state. League leaders turned their ire on him. Processionistschanted: Taazi Khabar, Mar Gaya Khizr. Then he threw in the sponge. Overnight he became the hero of Muslim sloganeers:Taazi Khabar Aayee Hai/Khizr Hamara Bhai Hai.

The juggernaut gathered speed. Hindus and Sikhs began to sell properties and slip outtowards eastern Punjab. One day I found my neighbour on one side had painted in large Urdu calligraphy Parsee Ka Makaan. Oneon the other side had a huge cross painted in white. Unmarked Hindu-Sikh houses were thus marked out. We werewithin walking distance of Mozang, a centre of Muslim goondas. I did not see anyone being killed but, unknown to me, escaped being murdered myself. I hadgone to do a case in Abbotabad. I decided to walk down to Taxila to catch a train to Lahore. I was surprised tosee the road deserted. Suddenly a lorryload of Sikh soldiers pulled up and a lieutenant ordered me to get in."Are you crazy?" he shouted. "They have killed all Sikhs in neighbouring villages and you are strolling The Singhs withManzur Qadir and his wife I along unconcerned." At Taxila station, I noticed the train halt at a signal. Sikhs weredragged out and killed. At Badami Bagh, there was another massacre. Locked in my first-class bogey, I neither saw nor heardanything. At Lahore, my friend Manzur Qadir (later foreign minister of Pakistan) was on the platform to take me home.

By July 1947, stories of violence against Muslims in east Punjab circulated in Lahore, anda trickle of Muslim refugees flew westwards. This further roused Muslim fury. The last time I went to the High Court I saw adozen Sikh students of National College in handcuffs. They were charged with the murder of two Muslims on Grand TrunkRoad, running in front of their college. Among them was Ganga Singh Dhilion, later pioneer of the demand for Khalistan.They were produced before Justice Teja Singh, the only Sikh judge. He heed them on bail.That had become the pattern of justice.

A week before Independence, Chris Everett, head of the CID in Punjab who had studied Lawwith me in London, advisedme to get out of Lahore. Escorted by six Baluch constables, my wife and I took a train toKalka to join our two children who had been sent ahead to their grand-parents in Kasauli. By arrangement, I met ManzurQadir coming down from Simla and handed him the keys of my house.

Then, I drove down to Delhi. There wasn't a soul on the 200-mile stretch. I arrived inDelhi on August 13, 1947. The next night I was among the crowd outside Parliament House chanting Bharat Mata Ki Jai. We heardSucheta Kripalani's voice over loudspeakers singing Vande Mataram. Then Nehru's Tryst with Destiny speech. What a Tryst it was! And what Destiny!