Vallabhbhai Patel Quotes

Jinnah and other Muslim leaders had stirred up the Muslims to violence to put pressure on all the parties to accede to Jinnah's Muslim League's demand of an independent Muslim nation—Pakistan. Messervy was very sympathetic to the Muslim leadership as he had been feuding with and frustrated by the predominantly Hindu ruling Congress Party. After partition he accepted the mercenary position of Commander in Chief of the Pakistani Army. Then he was shocked and horrified at the slaughter of the terrorist attacks by the Muslims—about 4,000 Sikh men, women and children had been beaten and cut to death. The Sikhs had been targeted largely because Sikh leaders had recently announced that if there were a Partition, Sikhs would refuse to live in nation under Muslim control.

A 'kirpan' is a type of knife—a weapon—which all male Sikhs are religiously obligated to have in his possession and on his body at all times. Singh was a Sikh Maharaja (King) of an area that had about an equal number of Muslims and Sikhs. The Sikh's had a long history of living under Muslim domination and wanted no part of any more. Patiala was within the Punjab and Jinnah was insisting that the Punjab should be a Province of the new Pakistan because the Punjab was majority Muslim. However, there were many Sikhs, as well as some Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians and virtually none of these wanted to be a part of Pakistan. Further, a significant portion of the Muslim Punjab population also preferred to join India for many reasons, not the least of which was that they had become used to a democracy where they had complete freedom of religion and civil rights as well, and with the exception of Turkey none of the Muslim countries were democratic. Based on the history, actions, inactions, and statements of the Muslim League which did not democratically elect its leaders, Pakistan would not likely be a democracy that guaranteed civil rights—especially religious rights—to their citizens (and they were right). So the majority of the people of the Punjab were opposed to becoming a part of Pakistan. The Sikhs were passionate opponents of being a part of Pakistan as they knew their Muslim neighbors one of whose major reasons for wanting a Muslim state was that everyone could then be forced to be Muslim or be expelled or ethnically cleansed.

Two months earlier, Jinnah and the Muslim League had, behind the scenes, orchestrated and abetted vicious, murderous, terrorist attacks on Sikhs by Muslim tribesman brought into the Punjab for the purpose." Master Tara Singh

Even into the 21st century, the problem was not solved and Muslims from Pakistan continue their futile but tragic terrorist tactics to try and acquire more territory from India." 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma

The throwing of flaming torches to burn out members of the other religion got out of control and the fires spread to the homes of all residents. The fires were so prevalent that the riot was then and has since been referred to as the "Shahalmi Gate Blaze". At the time Jinnah was horrified at the violence, but by the following year he and other Muslim League leaders were aiding and abetting Muslim terrorist attacks to put pressure on the government to create a separate Muslim state upon Indian independence—Pakistan. Most historians agree that the Muslim terrorism in the short run had worked, as it would have been unlikely that India would have been partitioned in the absence of violence. However, it set in motion a cultural pattern of religious hate, bigotry, intolerance, violence and murder which would plague Pakistan thereafter. The politicians throughout the country's history have tried to use the Muslim religious, fundamentalist, extremists for their purposes only to find that the fanatics were out of control and the entire Pakistani population has lived in fear, lest an extremist decide that what they did or say was inimical to Islam and assassinate him or her. They have assassinated even the highest levels of politicians—President, Governors of Provinces, National Legislatures as well as Journalists, writers and academics. But the average Pakistani citizen has always been at risk of brutal murder with hundreds killed every year in an atmosphere of total impunity for the murderers. They have even murdered married women who had been raped on the grounds that they were adulterers and were therefore stoned.

Muhammad Ali Jinnah and the other Muslim League leaders wanted to stir up India's Muslims in order to prevent Indian Independence from Britain unless India were partitioned and the Muslims could have their own nation. At that point the British and the Congress Party of India—the majority political party were both starting to plan for independence. Jinnah and most of the Muslim nationalists did not want to have Muslims in a Majority Hindu nation. To stop it, they first used fear to try and separate the many Indian Muslims who were politically active from their roles in and loyalty to the Congress Party which although Hindu dominated had Muslim members and officials. All the Muslims who were literate were aware of the terrible revelations of the Nazi Concentration Camps and the attempted extermination of all the Jews of Europe. The "party line" of the Muslim League was that once the British turned the government of India over to the Congress Party, they would turn on the Muslims and exterminate them so that India would be all Hindu. There were no such plans or even suggestions be anyone in the Congress party, the paranoia and the conspiracy theory resonated with many Indian Muslims just as conspiracy theories are believed by some people in every society. In this case, the paranoia that was unleashed by the Muslim League would have tragic consequences as with Independence getting closer many Muslims struck out and preemptively attacked and butchered Hindus and Sikhs who retaliated in kind and the butchery went on all through the Independence process and the partition of India to create a Muslim state—Pakistan. Almost 2 million people would be murdered in the sectarian violence that was unleashed.

The British wanted to turn over control of India to Nehru's Congress Party and make India independent. However, there had been sectarian rioting and murder between Muslims and all the other religions of India—Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians. Wavell was not confident that Nehru and Congress could control the situation and huge massacres would result. Gandhi, who normally did everything to avoid violence, this time placed Indian independence first and demanded continuation of the complete transition process including the police and military powers. This is one of the very few occasions on which non-violence was not pre-eminent for Gandhi.

The Muslim League was demanding that the Punjab become a part of Pakistan when independence was granted later. However, the Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Christians were all adamant that they would not live in a Muslim nation which would soon become a de facto theocracy if the British could not control them. The Punjab was divided between India and Pakistan, and hundreds of thousands died in Sikh-Muslim attacks and then Hindu-Muslim conflict in the Punjab.

Singh turned him down. Note that even before Pakistan was a country, Jinnah and other Muslim leaders had hopes of grabbing much of India as the British partitioned it, and have been trying to do so ever since the inception of Pakistan

The attitude of the non-Muslims at that time was based on the Muslim attacks in the Punjab on Sikhs where entire Sikh villages and neighborhoods in towns and cities were murdered—every man woman and child. In many cases women were first raped. The Muslims had been whipped up by the leaders of the Muslim League to put terrorist pressure on the Sikh, Hindu and British to meet the League's political and territorial demands for an Independent Pakistan. Soon there was retaliation in kind and there were many Hindus, Sikhs and Muslims engaged in internecine slaughter and behaving "little better than animals".

The Sikh's had a long history of living under Muslim domination and wanted no part of any more. Patiala was within the Punjab and Jinnah was insisting that the Punjab should be a Province of the new Pakistan because the Punjab was majority Muslim. However, there were many Sikhs, as well as some Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians and none of these wanted to be a part of Pakistan. Further, a significant portion of the Muslim Punjab population also would prefer to join India for many reasons, not the least of which was that they had become used to a democracy where they had complete freedom of religion and civil right as well, and with the exception of Turkey none of the Muslim countries were democratic and based on the Muslim League which did not democratically elect its leaders, Pakistan would not likely be a democracy that guaranteed civil rights (and they were right). So the majority of the people of the Punjab were opposed to becoming a part of Pakistan. The Sikhs were passionate opponents of being a part of Pakistan.

The Partition was accompanied by over 2 million murdered Indians as India was divided into a smaller India with almost all the Hindus and Sikhs and a slight majority of the Muslims and Pakistan with all Muslims who made that choice. Pakistan has been trying to de stabilize the area ever since to gain control of more land and became a theocracy and military dictatorship—sometimes de facto and sometimes de juro.

Churchill was reported to be so angry and exasperated that his face turned red and he was sputtering. During World War II, Gandhi, Nehru and other Indian Nationalists were leading protests against British control of India. This not only bogged down British soldiers surprising the nationalists rather than fighting in Burma or in other war theaters, but India supplied a huge number of battalions to the British Army the world over and if that manpower dried up, the allied war effort would suffer. The American State Department wanted Churchill to announce that after Japan was defeated, there would be a process toward self-government. This way, they thought, the Indians would redouble their effort to defeat the Japanese and stop the then current protests and strikes. Churchill was strongly opposed to any diminution of the British Empire, but beyond that, he knew India quite well and realized that at any hint of Independence the large Muslim minority in India would insist on autonomy or a partition of the country and use sectarian violence and terror to intimidate the Indian Congress party and the British, but the major victims of the terror—the Hindus and the Sikhs would not remain passive, but would retaliate in kind. President Roosevelt was in the midst of planning the Normandy Landings of the D-Day invasion and did not want to pressure Churchill and the British at this point in time, so the door to independence was not opened during the war and Britain had to deal with the protests throughout. However, when, after the war, the Labor Government, started a process toward Indian independence which resulted in exactly what Churchill predicted. At least 2 million Indians were slaughtered in the internecine terrorist cycles of fear and retaliation motivated terror attacks what were so extensive that the British military could not really control it.

He had little difficulty until he and the British Government announced the plan to grant independence to India. At that point the Muslim League came up with the notion of Partition of India which polarized the Indian politicians mostly along religious lines, and much of India was "up for grabs". No one wanted to concede anything to the other side as this might strengthen the other side's image of its power and just encourage them to go for more. Wavell's job became impossible.

The "trouble" was the terrorist attacks to gain an independent Pakistan that the Punjab Muslims were perpetrating against the Sikhs and the Hindus and the retaliations. At first organized in the cities they had become spontaneous and spread to the countryside. It turned out to be impossible for Governor Jenkins and the limited British troops and police to stop the violence in most places. By the end of the Partition of India hundreds of thousands of Punjabis had been killed.

This famous quotation, from this important address, at such a critical time in history has been admired for years. Despite his great oratory, the next months were to see almost 2 million Indians of all faiths killed in what was probably the worst internecine violence in human history. Ironically, the politically motivated terrorism had stopped since all the decisions had been made. The motivation for the frightful atrocities that took place from then on was vengeance and fear of more vengeance." 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma

A very passionate minority of India’s Muslims demanded a separate Islamic State (that would become Pakistan) but Hindu’s and Muslims were mixed throughout India and many Indians and British were concerned that there would be a bloodbath if the plans for independence went forward. When the decision had been made to partition India, Radcliffe had the unenviable task of deciding where the boundary was to be between Pakistan and India. No one on either side was satisfied with his effort. So, realizing that violence was about to break out, he packed quickly and went back to England. Over two million Indians were killed in the violence that broke out in the next weeks as there was a huge migration and ethnic cleansing to implement Radcliffe’s boundaries. Fifty years later, both India and Pakistan acknowledge that Radcliffe did a very reasonable job.

The Muslim League had whipped up and armed Muslims to fight for a separate Islamic state within India. However, instead of revolt or attacks on the Indian officials, things got out of hand and even after they had won the partition of India, the Muslim mobs went on a frenzy and attacked the Hindus and Sikhs in the areas where the Muslims were in the majority. Part of the reason was to intimidate the Indian and British authorities {627153} and the other part was for ethnic cleansing so when there was a partition—Pakistan—the minority Hindus and Sikhs would have converted, been frightened off, of killed. {627149}. Tragically, Hindus and Sikhs retaliated where they were in the majority and no one really knows how many millions of Indians were butchered in the creation of Pakistan.

India was soon to be granted Independence by the Labor Government, much to the chagrin of Winston Churchill and other Conservative politicians who wanted to diminish the British Empire as little as possible. Jinnah, not wanting the majority Muslim areas of India to be part of a Hindu majority India, came up with this clever alternative. Britain would grant independence only to the Hindu parts of India and the remainder—Pakistan—would remain in the Empire as an autonomous colony. Many of the British politicians believed that that would be a constant friction in the Empire as many of the "Pakistanis" would then want their own independence and use the terror tactics to fight for it. Besides, the Conservatives did not have enough votes to stop Independence to all of India. Jinnah's efforts however were enough to lengthen the debate in the British Parliament thereby delaying independence for all of India and angering the pro-independence leaders throughout India. Jinnah, by then an autocrat, did this in secret, behind the backs of his own Muslim colleagues, many of whom had Independence as their highest priority.

The Hindus of Bihar had retaliated brutally to the earlier Muslim ethnic cleansing terror against Hindus. The atrocity by their own co-religionists was very shocking to the party leaders who realized for the first time that the "Blood for Blood" slogan and other incendiary oratory could have disastrous consequences. They realized that they had lost control and influence over their own followers and became really frightened as they seemed to be forced to accept the Muslim unreasonable dictates or accept the uncontrolled internecine civil war that ended up killing over 2 million Indians and displacing, raping and wounding more than 15 million more in the largest mass migration in human history.

The British Prime Minster was supporting the partition of India so there would be an independent Muslim Pakistan which India had the power to do before they granted independence, Nehru told him that this would be against the wishes of the majority Hindus of India and therefore Attlee should reconsider. But to not have a Muslim independent state would mean compelling the Muslims to be in a unified country which they opposed. So while Nehru's point was well taken, there was no way that Attlee could do anything that would not involve compulsion of at least one of the two major factions in India, and as things would turn out, both sides felt compelled and limited their cooperation with each other and the British.

The fear of the Sikhs was that if the Punjab became a part of the new Muslim State of Pakistan, they would not be allowed to practice their religion and that the new Islamic state would discriminate against non-Muslims. They were successful in keeping the Punjab as a part of India, and turned out to have been right about the intolerance of the new Muslim state.