New Delhi, June 18, 2008 – FGB – ( Pages from Auto-biography of Swamy Raj) – I left Montgomery on 10th August 1947 and reached Amritsar after a few hours via Lahore. It was late night time when I reached Amritsar. Mr. Dhanpat Rai, my friend, who accompanied me all along took me to his house, I don’t remember the real location but it was situated somewhere in a lane near to the Hall Bazaar.

When I got up next morning, there was a great noise in the Hall Bazaar, a group of Sikh community was seen marching and shouting something, I peeped out side and I asked one of the passers and was told they were raising slogans against Muslims.
After a pause of about half an hour or so, another group passed by raising stereo type slogans; this group belonged to another community shouting at top of their voice in the same way while marching on the streets.

It looked as if there were no law and order in Amritsar. The authorities seemed to be just sleeping, taking no action, neither warning the groups, nor had the court imposed any curfew or ban on the people to assemble or move in groups on the streets. Why the police was mum, it could possibly be a matter of bias on their part.

After taking my breakfast, I took Dhanpat Rai along with me and asked to have a round of important places in the city. First we went to city Railway Station where different groups of people were shouting on the streets outside its premises, raising unnecessary slogans as usual, as if it had become fashion of the city to carry a group march on the streets and to make their presence felt by shouting their catchphrases at the top of their voice.

It was more apparent that the people in groups were just showing their emotions towards their respective communities, they were totally free and killed their time on streets. I was hurt to see all this, I went into a deep thought for a while – Are we mad? Are we really fit to be human, aren’t we worse than animals? All such questions were striking to my mind.

I heard from the people that some Muslim families were leaving Sharif Pura, a local locality in the city, and some Hindu and Sikh groups were harassing them. Next to Dhanpat’s house, there was a leader of the RSS, whom he introduced to me, and after a brief discussion he called some RSS volunteers to accompany us and to prevent the groups of Hindus and Sikhs to repress Muslim families. This showed that RSS volunteers had a principle; they were not in favor of harassing the innocent Muslims.

The name of area In charge of RSS was Bishambar Dass; all of us proceeded to Sharif Pura. The main purpose was to protect the interest of innocent Muslim families who wanted to go to Pakistan for a free passage up to the border.

Our small mission was more or less successful but while we were helping the Muslim families to get their luggage out of their houses, some groups of Hindus and Sikhs tried to obstruct our operation but we did not care for their poking.

They recognized RSS volunteers from their dresses and cleared the area and went off, and in that way we could do a bit to help the Muslim families and enabled them to join the Mobile Assemblage (Qafila) proceeding towards the border so as to cross over to Pakistan safely and comfortably.   

The era of the British Empire in India came to an end on August 11, 1947; they had issued this proclamation officially partitioning India into India and Pakistan to take official effect from 15 and 14 August 1947 respectively, and in this regard, the news flashed on the radio and appeared in newspapers next morning i.e. August 12th 1947.

The British Rulers, in fact, divided the subcontinent into India and Pakistan, based on the ratio of population of religious communities of both Hindus and Muslims. For official purposes of the Partition, Sikhs and others were included among the category of Hindus.

I was expecting that all leaders including Mahatma Gandhi would be anticipating that there would be a free slaughter of Hindus and Muslims on either side on an unprecedented scale since no proper time and safeguard was provided to the population on either side.

It was politically a clear signal based on previous history that unparalleled massacres would happen on the side of Muslim populated area in newly created Pakistan and a slighter killing on the other way round, but no community could go Scot Free from this guilt. Both communities of Muslims and Hindus including Sikhs were parties to free murders of the innocent people and looting their property foolishly, recklessly and shamelessly.

The trend of the political leaders prevalent at that time was that they preferred Partition at the earliest, to get power for themselves at any cost rather than saving the human lives of both the communities.

In fact, all the leaders irrespective of the groups or political parties, were only watching their own interests at the cost of human sufferings; they were not concerned whether they were Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs or Christians; they simply wanted to kill the people of the opposite community blindly, no matter whether the victim was a child, a woman, an elderly person, an invalid, unsound, crippled being, leper or a blind.

The political leaders at both sides were using their cronies, who were carrying stone hearts, no sentiments, no emotions, and no sympathy for the people, who were projecting merciless killings without any pity or clemency.

The leaders had no time to bother about the political consequences; they could pretty well delay the independence and could set the peaceful transfer of population under the military and govt. supervision, but they had no time except to focus on their own high chairs, positions or to meet their egos with narrow self targets. 

For example, Jawahar Lal Nehru was surely to get the chair of the Prime Minister, which was the most important for him; the lives of innocent millions of masses and their tragedy had probably no meaning for him and that part of the issue of Partition kept the sword hanging on millions of innocent people. Similarly other leaders were after the ministerial berths of their choice by ignoring the other factors of human victimization of communal riots.

As regards Mahatma Gandhi, the leaders around him reminded him that he would certainly get the honor of the Nobel Prize, which was recommended five times in his favor in 1937, 1938, 1939, 1943 and 1947. I can’t say what Gandhiji might have thought about the Nobel Prize, but one thing was sure that he knew it very well and had no objection to get the honor, hence, ever objected to it, meaning thereby that he was equally interested to get that honor, which was to carry a lot of money along with it.

Similarly Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was then believed to be suffering from TB/Cancer, was interested hastily to become the Governor General of Pakistan without loss of time; his health used to warn him time and again that his time was short.

While he was terribly engaged in the process of Partition and his poor health reminded him to act fast, he became partially justified to desire for early Partition, but his duty towards the people as a whole was more important, which he too neglected, lakhs of Muslims could be sacrificed in communal riots and that aspect he looks to have ignored.

It was believed from his background and normal talk that Muhammad Ali Jinnah had secular thoughts before Partition. He was to become the first Govern-General of Pakistan and President of its constituent assembly.

Even after the proclamation of August 11, 1947, Jinnah gave his mind that he would make Pakistan a secular country.  He insisted that Pakistan would be a modern democracy, with the hierarchy of mullahs and priests playing no role in the molding of its destiny.  
 
While inaugurating the assembly on August 11, 1947, M.A. Jinnah spoke of an inclusive and pluralist democracy promising equal rights for all citizens regardless of religion, caste or creed.

His speech was highlighted on radio as well as newspapers advising the highest body in the land.

The excerpt of his speech as relayed to public:

“If we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous we should wholly and solely concentrate on the well-being of the people, and especially of the masses and the poor... you are free- you are free to go to your temples, mosques or any other place of worship in this state of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed that has nothing to do with the business of the State... in due course of time Hindus will cease to be Hindus and Muslims will cease to be Muslims - not in a religious sense for that is the personal faith of an individual - but in a political sense as citizens of one state.”

With this speech, most of the Hindus, living in the part of Pakistan, shed their fear and decided to stay in Pakistan. Even earlier, there was a specific statement by Mahatma Gandhi to stay at their respective homes without fear, if they so wish.
Mahatma Gandhi had given a call to the people not to be panicky but to stay at home or words to this effect. I read it in the newspaper, I don’t remember exactly what the date was but it was definitely just a few days before 15 August 1947.

The news appeared in an Urdu paper either in Daily Pratap or Daily Milap among others. The people at that time used to treat Gandhiji’s word as Demi God’s Blessing, and when they found his advice in the paper, it was natural for them to follow his word blindly, so much trust they placed in him.

As a result of that call or advice from both Mr. Jinnah and Gandhiji, most of the people in our city decided to stay in Pakistan without any apprehension, similarly it would have happened all over the country.

In short, in the Partition of undivided India into India and Pakistan, India had lost 1/3 of the land; the formula gave birth to a sovereign country with the partition of Bengal province of British India into East Pakistan and the other portion remained in India as West Bengal.  Similarly Punjab province was divided into two parts, one remained in India and the other went to Pakistan, named as West Punjab and East Punjab.

These were the crucial provinces, where anything could happen, free murders, free looting and free lawlessness, the leaders knew it in advance, but who had time to bother for the masses?

My mind flashed back in the past of India, say about 1000 years ago, including the Mughal period who ruled India followed by the British Rule.

I recollected those circumstances; the nation had never sacrificed the national sovereign values and the unity of the motherland earlier, and the fight for freedom went on, in some form or the other. Their main purpose was to oust the foreign rulers from the country, whatever means available.

I didn’t agree that Mahatma Gandhi with his exclusive efforts got India free; the freedom came to India by joint efforts, favorable circumstances, and above all, the pillars of the British Empire had already been shaken by several other alien reasons, and they wanted to quit by themselves from India to save their face.

In other words, the deteriorating situation had made the British Empire too weak to continue its hold in India or elsewhere, which they had forcibly captured during their prime tactics of exploiting the disunity of certain countries and made them their slaves and their countries as colonies. They used the national resources of their colonies for their own commercial benefits and became one of the wealthiest and most expanded nations on the Earth.

In short, I have no doubt that India became free with its old background and not with the exclusive struggle of leadership of Mahatma Gandhi and his colleagues.

I don’t deny the great contribution of Mahatma Gandhi and other national leaders but they came in the late stage, and got the reward of someone else. On the contrary they punished the masses by taking away their valuable lives by accepting Partition without giving proper planning, strategy, time - frame, for safe transfer of the population at both ends.

The flash was continuously haunting and reminding me how the real fight to free India from the clutches of the foreign rulers began and operated during the past one thousand years or so.

In that fight there was a dignity, but the way the present Indian leadership under Mahatma Gandhi accepted it so hurriedly that it could be treated not only an unfortunate voluntary accident, but also an unpardonable event of history on the part of short sightedness of the leaders.

These leaders totally destroyed the moral value of the past golden history of the freedom struggle and preferred to sacrifice the lives of millions of people in the communal riots which were invariably to happen after 15th August keeping in view the past history.

The freedom could be scheduled properly, but the Indian leadership was so desperate that they decided to act in an extreme hurry to get the freedom cashed and replace the rulers by installing themselves in their political positions.

Indian leadership, in fact, was more in a haste to get it rather than the British rulers, who could leave the country at any convenient set period and prevent avoidable massacres of millions of people.

My thought sparked back to the history of Bharata Varsha. I felt even though, at that time, India had no political unity, the entire country was principally bound by a common culture, normally known as ‘Santana Dharma’. 

At that time, there were rajas, small and big states but all were united with a single culture of Matru-Bhoomi, Punya-Bhoomi, the Dharma-Bhoomi; they had all longed for the collective freedom of Bharat Mata or Bharata Varsha, or United India.

The British Empire in India changed the Bharatavarsha, or the dream of United India into Indian Sub-continent to break down the Hindu Morale in their territorial unity and integrity.

Even the land which lies south of the Himalayas, East of Sakadvipa (Seistan), South-East of Vahlika (Balkhj), West of Burma and between the two seas, was never a political set-up or machination created by the invaders.  In fact, if we go by the history, the culture of India and particularly of Santana Dharma, or United India always remained in tact, no body had disturbed it. 

Of all the Mughal rulers who ruled vast territories of India from 712 to 1857 CE, Aurangzeb was the most condemned kings being anti-Hindu; he ruled from 1658 to 1707.

This particular King not only taxed the Hindus heavily but also did their maximum forcible conversion to Muslims. In addition, the Hindus were harassed, humiliated and discriminated against them in administrative positions unless they accepted conversion to Islam.

It happened in his territory, most of the Rajput rulers were persecuted and forced for conversion from Hindus to Muslims; but when the circumstances altered, he also changed his ideologies a bit to win over certain influential Hindu Rajputs with some concessions to keep his reign in tact.

King Aurangzeb was condemned by all quarters; just because he was responsible for converting lakhs of Hindus into Muslims and also converted the entire military missionary into Islam. It is this period of about 50 years from 1658 to 1707 where he forced to convert more than 1/3 Hindus living in India into Muslims.
 
People, in fact, were scared under the governments of Surs and the Mughals down to the accession of Aurangzeb (1658-1707). In short, this King on the name of conversion into Islam, got lakhs of people massacred in his regime, who disobeyed his direction of conversion. 

The majority of Hindus were forced to convert into Muslims at the edge of sword or given rewards during the reign of King Aurangzeb, and he wanted the entire India to convert into an Islamic country and the seeds which he had implanted during his 50 years reign from 1658 to 1707, the British Rule made a note of it and separated 1/3 of Muslim India and named it Pakistan in 1947.

It happened after 240 years, that the British Rulers converted Aurangzeb’s dream into reality, who was an extreme anti-Hindu and great pro-Muslim and wished the entire India to become a Muslim state, and our leaders with their narrow outlook didn’t repent for their misdeed of reckless and unplanned Partition but treated themselves as heroes of Indian Freedom, which broke the house of two brothers.

Continued ….