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The partition of India in 1947 was the division of British India into two independent dominion states, the Union of India and Dominion of Pakistan. The Union of India is today the Republic of India and the Dominion of Pakistan, the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition involved the division of two provinces, Bengal and the Punjab, based on district-wise Hindu or Muslim majorities. It also involved the division of the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury, between the two new dominions. The partition was set forth in the Indian Independence Act 1947 and resulted in the dissolution of the British Raj, or Crown rule in India. The two self-governing countries of India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.
Gujranwala is the fourth most-populous city in the Pakistani province of Punjab. Located in northern Punjab's Rachna Doab, it serves as the headquarters of the eponymous district and division. It is also known as "City of Wrestlers" and is quite famous for its food. A metropolitan hub, it is the fifth-most populous in the country.
Pakistan has five major ethno-regional communities in Pakistan: Baloch, Muhajir, Punjabis, Pushtuns and Sindhis, as well as several smaller groups. There are also religious and sectarian groups such as Ahmadis, Christians, Hindus, Kalasha, Parsis and Sikhs, and Shia Muslim sects including Ismailis and Bohras.
The National Unionist Party was a political party based in the Punjab Province during the period of British rule in India. The Unionist Party mainly represented the interests of the landed gentry and landlords of Punjab, which included Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. The Unionists dominated the political scene in Punjab from World War I to the independence of India and the creation Pakistan after the partition of the province in 1947. The party's leaders served as Prime Minister of the Punjab. The creed of the Unionist Party emphasized: "Dominion Status and a United Democratic federal constitution for India as a whole".
The Dominion of Pakistan, officially Pakistan, was an independent federal dominion in the British Commonwealth of Nations, which existed from 14 August 1947 to 23 March 1956. It was created by the passing of the Indian Independence Act 1947 by the British parliament, which also created an independent Dominion of India.
Gujranwala District, is a district that is a part of the Majha region in Punjab, Pakistan. Gujranwala District is bordered by the districts of Wazirabad, Sialkot, Hafizabad and Sheikhupura. Gujranwala district has 5 National Assembly and 12 Punjab Assembly constituencies. Gujranwala is known as the city of wrestlers and famous for its food.
Ishtiaq Ahmed is a Pakistani-Swedish political scientist and author.
Religious violence in India includes acts of violence by followers of one religious group against followers and institutions of another religious group, often in the form of rioting. Religious violence in India has generally involved Hindus and Muslims.
The Noakhali riots were a series of semi-organized massacres, rapes and abductions, combined with looting and arson of Hindu properties, perpetrated by the Muslim mobs in the districts of Noakhali in the Chittagong Division of Bengal in October–November 1946, a year before India's independence from British rule.
The 1950 East Pakistan riots took place between Hindus and Muslims in East Pakistan, which resulted in several thousands of Hindus being killed in pogroms.
Muslim League National Guard, or Muslim National Guard, was the name of a quasi-paramilitary Islamist organization associated with the All-India Muslim League that took part in the Pakistan Movement. It was active in the violence that ensued during the Partition of India and later the Kashmir conflict.
The 1947 Rawalpindi massacres refer to widespread violence, massacres, and rapes of Hindus and Sikhs by Muslim mobs in the Rawalpindi Division of the Punjab Province of British India in March 1947. The violence preceded the partition of India and was instigated and perpetrated by the Muslim League National Guards—the militant wing of the Muslim League—as well as local cadres and politicians of the League, demobilised Muslim soldiers, local officials and policemen. It followed the fall of a coalition government of the Punjab Unionists, Indian National Congress and Akali Dal, achieved through a six-week campaign by the Muslim League. The riots left between 2,000 and 7,000 Sikhs and Hindus dead, and set off their mass exodus from Rawalpindi Division. 80,000 Sikhs and Hindus were estimated to have left the Division by the end of April. The incidents were the first instance of partition-related violence in Punjab to show clear manifestations of ethnic cleansing, and marked the beginning of systematic violence against women that accompanied the partition, seeing rampant sexual violence, rape, and forced conversions, with many women committing mass suicides along with their children, and many killed by their male relatives, for fear of abduction and rape. The events are sometimes referred to as the Rape of Rawalpindi.
Religious discrimination in Pakistan is a serious issue for the human rights situation in modern-day Pakistan. Christians, Hindus, Sikhs, Shias, and Qadiyanis among other religious minorities often face discrimination and at times are even subjected to violence. In some cases Christian churches and the worshippers themselves have been attacked. Although, there is very little record of this. Khawaja Nazimuddin, the 2nd Prime Minister of Pakistan, stated: "I do not agree that religion is a private affair of the individual nor do I agree that in an Islamic state every citizen has identical rights, no matter what his caste, creed or faith be".
During the Partition of India, violence against women occurred extensively. It is estimated that during the partition between 75,000 and 100,000 women were kidnapped and raped. The rape of women by men during this period is well documented, with women sometimes also being complicit in these attacks. In March 1947, systematic violence against women started in Rawalpindi where Sikh women were targeted by Muslim mobs. Violence was also perpetrated on an organized basis, with Pathans taking Hindu and Sikh women from refugee trains while armed Sikhs periodically dragged Muslim women from their refugee column and killing any men who resisted, while the military sepoys guarding the columns did nothing.
After the Partition of India, during October–November 1947 in the Jammu region of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, many Muslims were massacred and others driven away to West Punjab. The killings were carried out by extremist Hindus and Sikhs, aided and abetted by the forces of Maharaja Hari Singh. The activists of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) played a key role in planning and executing the riots. An estimated 20,000–100,000 Muslims were massacred. Subsequently, many non-Muslims were massacred by Pakistani tribesmen, in the Mirpur region of today's Pakistani administered Kashmir, and also in the Rajouri area of Jammu division.
Elections to the Punjab Provincial Assembly were held in January 1946 as part of the 1946 Indian provincial elections.
An attack on a railway train carrying Muslim refugees during the Partition of India was carried out at Amritsar in Indian Punjab on 22 September 1947. Three thousand Muslim refugees were killed and a further one thousand wounded. Only one hundred passengers remained uninjured. These murders demonstrated that railway carriages provided very little protection from physical assault. After several such attacks on Muslim refugees by Sikhs armed with rifles, swords, and spears, the Government of Pakistan stopped all trains from the Indian Punjab to the Pakistani Punjab at the end of September 1947. The Sikh Jathas, which were ruthless, led the attacks for ethnically cleansing the Eastern Punjab of its Muslim population. Earlier in September, they had massacred 1,000 Muslim refugees on a Pakistan-bound train near Khalsa College, Amritsar. The violence was the most pronounced in the Indian East Punjab.
Hinduism is a minority religion in Punjab province of Pakistan followed by about 0.19% of its population. Punjab has the second largest number of Hindus in Pakistan after Sindh. Hinduism is followed mainly in the Southern Punjab districts of Rahim Yar Khan and Bahawalpur.
The 1948 Gujrat train massacre was an attack on a refugee train and massacre of Hindu and Sikh refugees by armed Muslim Pathans at Gujrat, Pakistan on 12 January 1948. 1,300–1,600 Hindus and Sikhs were killed in the massacre, 150 were wounded. The train was carrying 2,400 Hindu and Sikh refugees from the North West Frontier Province and taking them to India following their displacement due to the partition of India in August of the previous year. Only 750 of these refugees are reported to have survived and made it to India.
References
- 1 2 3 Ahmed 2022, p. 457.
- 1 2 Ahmed 2022, p. 456.
- 1 2 Khosla 1989, p. 151.
- 1 2 3 4 "Another Indian Train Massacre". The Daily News. 26 September 1947. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- 1 2 Khosla 1989, p. 152.
- 1 2 "Train Passengers Slaughtered". The Muswellbrook Chronicle. 26 September 1947. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ↑ Major, Andrew (1995), "Abduction of women during the partition of the Punjab", South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 18 (1): 62, doi:10.1080/00856409508723244,
Describing the massacre of refugees at Kamoke, in Gujranwala district, on 24 September 1947, an Indian official wrote, 'The most ignoble feature of the tragedy was the distribution of young girls amongst the members of the Police Force, the National Guards and the local goondas. The S.H.O. [Station House Officer] Dildar Hussain collected the victims in an open space near Kamoke Railway Station and gave a free hand to the mob. After the massacre was over, the girls were distributed like sweets.'
- ↑ Khosla 1989, pp. 151–152.
- 1 2 "Moslems attack train, slay Hindus, Sikhs". Northern Advocate. 26 September 1947. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
- ↑ Khosla 1989, p.152: "At 12 noon, the train was attacked and almost the entire body of passengers was killed. About six hundred young girls were carried away.".