Thread by @Aabhas24

#PartitionHorrorsRemembranceDay
Some quotes in this thread.

Alain Danielou says in Histoire de l'Inde:

"India whose ancient borders stretched until Afghanistan, lost with the country of seven rivers (the Indus Valley), the historical center of her civilization.

At a time when the Muslim invaders seemed to have lost some of their extremism & were ready to assimilate themselves to other populations of India, the European conquerors, before returning home, surrendered once more to Muslim fanaticism the cradle of Hindu civilization."

Says the French Socilaist Philosopher, Jacques Ellul :

"One ought not to forget that the terrible war of 1947 in India between the Muslims and Hindus was fought on a purely religious basis.

More than one million people died and since massacres had not taken place when the Muslims had lived within the Hindu-Buddhist orbit, one may presume that the war was caused by the attempt to set up an independent Islamic republic."

Says Mahatma Gandhi:
"If the vast majority of Muslims regard themselves as a separate nation having nothing in common with the Hindus and others, no power on earth can compel them to think otherwise.

And if they want to partition India on that basis, they must have the partition, unless Hindus want to fight against such a division."

Quoted by @Koenraad_Elst in his momentous work, "Why I killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's defence"

Gandhi Ji again. He says,

"I would tell the Hindus to face death cheerfully if the Muslims are out to kill them. I would be a real sinner if after being stabbed I wished in my last moment that my son should seek revenge. I must die without rancour.

(…) You may turn round and ask whether all Hindus and all Sikhs should die. Yes, I would say. Such martyrdom will not be in vain."

Source: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. LXXXVII

Mahatma Gandhi again,

He says,
"I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be.

If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore. (…) When you suffer from fear you die before death comes to you. That is not glorious.

I will not feel sorry if I hear that people in the Punjab have died not as cowards but as brave men. (…) I cannot be forced to salute any flag.

If in that act I am murdered I would bear no ill will against anyone & would rather pray for better sense for the person or persons who murder me."

Source: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. LXXXIX

Here is Mahatma Gandhi quoted by Larry Collins and D. Lapierre in there Magnum Opus, Freedom at Midnight.

"If all the Punjabis were to die to the last man without killing, Punjab will be immortal. (...) Offer yourselves as non-violent, willing sacrifices."

Here Hamid Dalwai brother of @MpHusainDalwai, Quoted in B. Madhok: Indianisation

"The creation of Pakistan is not the end of this problem. H.S. Suhrawardy said in 1946 that Pakistan was 'not the last but only the latest demand' of Indian Muslims.(...)

He recommended the creation of a number of 'Muslim-majority pockets' in India. The birth of the Mallapuram district is therefore only a sign of further demands to come. (...)

The relaxation, on the eve of a mid-term poll, of the service rules enjoining monogamy on Central Government servants whose religion permitted polygamy was effected by the Government of India under the pressure of these organizations."

Then Hamid Dalwai is quoted in @Koenraad_Elst 's Decolonizing the Hindu mind: Ideological development of Hindu revivalism. New Delhi

"It is quite true that partition far from proving to be a solution to the Muslim problem has only aggravated it.

But it is simply not true that there was a happy solution waiting round the corner only if partition had been avoided. For the Muslims demanded parity as the price for remaining in a politically united India and surely this was an impossible demand."

This book written very recently, explains the horror so well from page 56-60.

Bina D’Costa writes:

"At the height of the riots, during August and September, when the majority of rapes and abductions occurred, there was almost no limit to the vehemence of the mobs.

Throughout the chaos, both planned and random abductions of women and girls were carried out, particularly in situations in which large number of refugees — disoriented and inadequately protected — had assembled or were on the move.

For example, Kirpal Singh records that two trains crossed on the Kamoke railway line, one carrying 260 refugees and the other carrying Pakistan Army soldiers. After the latter realized that the former was carrying Hindu refugees, it was attacked.

Most of the men were killed and 50 women and girls were forcibly taken by the soldiers. Similarly, in East Bengal, the Ansars, a paramilitary force responsible for the safety of the citizens also perpetrated attacks and abducted Hindu women.

One of my respondents was on one of the trains leaving Pakistan and recalled how she hid in a toilet. (...) In the confusion that followed, while she was fortunate enough to avoid being abducted, she witnessed many girls and women being taken from the trains. (...)

Describing the massacres of refugees in Kamoke, Gujranwala district,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(an Islamo-fascist org-AN) & the local goondas.

The Station House Officer Dilder 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.

Later on as a result of the efforts of the Liasion Agency and the East Punjab Police some girls were recovered from Kamoke, Eminabad and some surrounding villages (...) A list of at least 70 untraced girls abducted from the Kamoke train was handed over [to] the Police by District

Liasion Officer (...) It is feared that most of these girls had been sold or taken underground."

The records of partition are so heart-wrenching & at times I has bent to think how humans can ever be so barbaric.

And then I quote S.Gurbachan Singh Talib from this compilation.
"Pakistan, as has been told above, was originally conceived to comprise only the North-Western areas of the Punjab, Sind, Kashmir, the N.-W. Frontier Province and Baluchistan.

But in a later concept of the thing,issued in the form of a revised version of the original scheme,it was devised to comprise, besides the areas originally ear-marked for it,also Assam & Bengal in the East, & Hyderabad and Malabar in the South.

In addition to these extensive strongholds of Muslim power in the North-West, in the East and the South, beleaguering non-Muslim India from all strategic points, were also to be several smaller though by no means too small, Muslim pockets,

studded all over the country-one in the United Provinces, one in the heart of Rajputana & another still in Bihar.

Thus, the Muslims of all India, & not only those of the Muslim majority areas, were to have independent countries of their own, parcelling out India into so many new Muslim-dominated States."

He further mentions as below:
"Sardar Abdur Rab Nishtar, now a member of the Pakistan Government, declared: 'Pakistan can only be achieved through shedding blood of ourselves, & if need be, & if opportunity arose, by shedding blood of others. Muslims are no believers in Ahimsa.'"

Talib further says,
"As a corollary to the above, in the period up till August, 1947 there were about a million Hindu and Sikh refugees from the Western districts of the Punjab, from the North-Western Frontier Province, from Baluchistan and the devastated city of Lahore,

besides Amritsar, who had to be looked after in refugee camps by the Punjab Government, by the Sikh States of the Punjab and by bodies like the Hindu Mahasabha and the Shromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee. There were very few Muslim refugees anywhere in this period.

Such few as there were, came mainly from Amritsar, where alone up till August, the Hindus and Sikhs had been able to put up anything like a fight for life against Muslim aggression."