Farewell to Shimla

VRV,

Maybe you don't understand the meaning of flip and flop.


FACT : Jinnah did make lots of efforts and travelled all over Punjab stopping violence. He also gave orders to shoot at sight any Muslim whot tries to harrass Hindus. These are facts of history not denied by anyone but yourself (who thinks Mian Iftikharuddin was evil communalist- so it doesn't matter what you think)

FACT: Mountbatten did not deploy the Boundary commission force which was to be deployed on 1st August. This is a fact. It was this decision that was responsible for the violence.


FACT: Mountbatten failed to deploy (not disband) the Boundary Force on 1st August

FACT: Jinnah was part of the meeting that disbanded the Boundary force on 29 of August because Mountbatten FAILED to deploy the Boundary Force on 1st of August.


FACT: Gurdaspur was not given to India for any reason but to give India the road to Kashmir. Nothing else. This water supply theory is something you have produced out of your rear orifice my friend and you know it.

FACT: As for the Award... even Radcliffe admitted tht Mountbatten asked him to make a last minute change.


Have some shame VRV, you are beginning to show us how disgustingly dishonest Indians can be.

Yasser,

U started giving statements. U are looking more stupider now(?)

IB,

If ur post is meant for me then I say I ignore u. Pl discuss the stuff with ur O/A-level boyz.

Yasser,

Let me summarize ur flip-flops.

1.

Flip: Initially claimed that Jinnah made 'superhuman' efforts to 'quell' riots in Pakistan (u meant a speech in Karachi, I know)

Flop: Mountbatten responsible that he didnt deploy Punjab Boundary Force in Pakistan.

2.

Flip: MB disbanded PBF to weaken Pakistan

Flop: Jinnah was part of the team that decided to disband PBF. So what, it's MB who disbanded it (rolling eyes).

3.

Flip: Gurdaspur was given to India for political reasons

Flop: If Gurdaspur waterworks that supply water to Amritsar, then again it's MB who decided it never mind that Award was jointly made by Radcliffe, Justice Ali and another India's apppointee. No , it's MB who made it.
(though Jinnah and Liaqta didnt have problems with that).


Yasser, It cant be supider than this. When will u grow?

Re: # 220, at least MAJ was better then your GG Mountbatter who allowed muslims to be slaughtered by keeping police away from the riot-effected areas.

Once again two points:

1. Mountbatten was in charge of the Boundary force which he refused to deploy despite appeals from the government of Pakistan.

2. Majority of the killings happened in East Punjab particularly Gurdaspur and Amritsar regions... under the jurisdiction of India's Governor General Mountbatten, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and the rioter-in-chief Patel.

It's Jinnah who was the GG of Pakistan, who's ALONE responsible for the killings under his jurisdiction.

So in other words, you don't have a point. Well said.

Stupid Yasser,

U create ur own sentence and feel happy abt ur dementia?

U can be a liar and lie abt ur own lies. (Rolling eyes)

PPS: I see it is back to "We will kill Muslims because they asked for Pakistan- how dare they" line of argument.

How non-violently Gandhian indeed and I don't mean it sarcastically.

Re: # 214

Why don't you tell for the record what SGPC stands for?

I am afraid so far you have made no valid points. Your point about the disbandment of the boundary force which India's first governor general as the supreme arbiter was supposed to deploy is just hilarious to anyone who is aware of history.

VRV,

You are a funny guy.

Mountbatten does not deploy the Boundary Force from 14th-29th August (as he was supposed to)... ultimately the Joint Defence Council (consisting of Nehru and Patel as well) decides that the boundary force is useless (Since it was not deployed by Mountbatten)

And you want to blame Jinnah for it. Either you are shameless... or just plain stupid. It is up to you to decide which one you are.

Why are you defending Mountbatten so much. Let me quote a right-thinking Indian again:

TRIAL OF MOUNTBATTEN

The trial of Mountbatten: LETTER FROM NEW DELHI

http://www.dawn.com/2002/08/10/op.htm#3


By Kuldip Nayar


THERE is a serious proposal in certain academic circles to hold a trial of Lord Mountbatten, inviting scholars from Pakistan and Great Britain to participate in it.

The purpose is not to apportion blame to the last viceroy for India’s division — something which he could not help — but to delineate his role in the murder of more than 10 lakh people and the uprooting of another two crore. The charge against him is that the holocaust was due to Mountbatten’s wrong decision to advance the date of partition from June 3, 1948, to August 15, 1947, some 10 months earlier.

I recall how Mountbatten’s announcement came as a bombshell to us in Sialkot city, now part of Pakistan. There was suddenly a sense of fear and insecurity. The borders of India and Pakistan had yet to be demarcated, and the fate of the entire population of Punjab, Bengal and Assam hung in the balance. Both Hindus and Muslims began to pass anxious moments because they did not know through which area the dividing line would run.

Rumours were so strong that people were willing to believe even the impossible. They were confused. That partition was inevitable was beginning to seep into their mind. But they were not preparing to leave their hearth or home. By advancing the date by 10 months, he had unwittingly caused the murder of one million people. I told this to Mountbatten when I interviewed him at his sprawling mansion in Broadlands near London in October 1971, for my book, Distant Neighbours.

As if I had touched a raw nerve, he felt uncomfortable and lapsed into silence. He admitted that at least one million people died during partition. But his defence was strange: He had saved from starvation three times the numbers during the 1943 Bengal famine by giving 10 per cent of space in his ships for the transport of food grains. This was despite the opposition of Churchill, the then prime minister. Mountbatten was then Chief of the Allies Naval Operations in South Asia.

“Well, before Providence, I can say that the balance is in my favour,� said Mountbatten. And then he added: “Wherever colonial rule has ended, bloodshed has been there. This is the price you pay.�

Why did he advance the date? I asked Mountbatten. He said he could not hold the country together. “Things were slipping from my hands.� The great Calcutta Killing, one year before partition, had taken place and communal tension prevailed all over. On top of it, there had been the announcement that the British were leaving. “Therefore, I myself decided to quit sooner,� said Mountbatten. “This was not to the liking of Lord Attlee (then the British prime minister) but he had given me full powers.�

The comment by first Indian governor-general, Chakravarti Rajagopalachari, was: “If you had not transferred power when you did, there would have been no power to transfer.� When I checked with Campbell-Johnson, Mountbatten’s press secretary, the reason for advancing the date, he said that August 15 was the date when Mountbatten had heard for the first time in Churchill’s room the news of the Japanese surrender, which ended the Second World War. However, the impression of some British foreign office men was that Mountbatten was in a hurry to get back to a bigger position in the British navy.

What Mountbatten did not realize was that the pent-up feelings in the hearts of Hindus and Muslims in the wake of communal propaganda and riots were bound to find a vent. At least government servants should not have been allowed to move from one country to another on the basis of their religion. Both Hindus and Muslims in the military, the police and other security forces had got contaminated over the years. To expect them to be impartial and punish the guilty from their own community was to hope for the impossible, particularly when they knew that they would go scot-free in their “own country.�

Looking back, however, one cannot but blame Mountbatten for doing so little to ensure protection for the minorities. He had assured Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, a top leader in the Congress, “I shall not use merely the armed police, I will order the army and the air force to act and I will use tanks and aeroplanes to suppress anybody who wants to create trouble.� Not a fraction of that happened. It was a free-for-all.

When Mohammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan’s founder, asked Mountbatten to “shoot Muslims� if necessary to stop violence and when Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, suggested handing over the cities to the military, Mountbatten’s response was feeble. It may be an uncharitable remark to make but he appeared more interested in becoming the common governor-general of India and Pakistan — an office that Jinnah did not let him have — than dousing the fire of communalism.

The Punjab Boundary force, which Mountbatten formed on August 1, 1947, to quell the riots, did little to stop the killings of men, women and children. In its report, it said the defence of the force is: “Throughout, the killing was pre-medieval in its ferocity. Neither age nor sex was spared; mothers with babies in the arms were cut down, speared or shot... both sides were equally merciless.�

In terms of men, the force had strength of 55,000, including Brigadier Mohammad Ayub Khan, who later became Pakistan’s first martial law administrator. The force had a high proportion of British officers. In fact, this proved to be its undoing. The officers were interested in repatriation to Britain, not in an operation that might tie them down to the subcontinent for some more time. The British commander of the force, General Rees, had reportedly instructions not to get involved and to protect only “European lives.�

The reports of the Boundary Commission, appointed soon after partition, to delineate the borders between the Punjabs, Bengals and the Assam-Sylhet sector, added more fuel to the fire. Cyrill Radcliffe, a British lawyer who chaired the commission, earned the wrath of both the Congress and the Muslim League.

After failing to get the UN to nominate the Boundary Commission’s members, Jinnah had suggested to Mountbatten the name of Radcliffe, whom he had seen arguing intricate cases in London courts. Nehru had also approved his name after consulting “that sneaky fellow Krishna Menon,� as Radcliffe put it during his talk with me at his flat in London in October 1971.

Hindus were expecting Lahore to be included in India and Muslims were thinking that Calcutta would go to Pakistan. Both were disappointed. Radcliffe told me that he never had the slightest doubt from the beginning that Calcutta (Jinnah had said earlier it was no use having East Bengal without Calcutta) should go to India and Lahore to Pakistan. “I had to give them Lahore because they had to have a big city in West Punjab,� he said.

After deciding that the rest of the job was only to draw the lines, he did what “came to that much.� He was so ‘rushed’ that he had ‘no time’ to go into the details, Radcliffe said. “Even accurate district maps were not there and what material there was, was also inadequate. What could I do in one and a half months?�

True, but what a way to divide the subcontinent and decide the future of millions of people. The trial of Mountbatten may assuage the feelings of people in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. They still believe that the blood of lakhs of people is on Mountbatten’s hands.

The writer is a freelance columnist based in New Delhi.

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What Nayar doesn't say is that Mountbatten did it on the behest of Nehru, Patel and Gandhi.

'Majority of the killings at partition happened because of Gurdaspur flip flop.'

Killings in Punjab happened becoz of Jinnah and his 'Pakistan at any cost' principle. Period.

It's AIML that gave training to use weapons and gave certificates to those who passed those tests of arson. (There's a book by SGPC, Amritsar that gave photocopies of such 'certificates').

Whay shud I absolve Jinnah of crime of overlooking the murder and mayhem in Punjab. Jinnah was part of the team that took this decision to disband PBF.

Since 14th August 1947, it's Jinnah's who u are telling did some superhuman effort to quell riots.

Now u blame MB for that.

A M A Z I N G!!!!!!!!

Majority of the killings at partition happened because of Gurdaspur flip flop. Gurdaspur became the scene of the most violence. And no not only Ahmadis... though they were the decisive factor in determining the majority... but hundreds of thousands of Muslims were butchered by callous Congress-backed Hindus and Sikhs.

Also no I am not aware of why Mountbatten changed the award and withheld it till 18th August. I would assume it was to shock and awe Pakistan.

Why don't you enlighten us with your point of view?

Yasser,

Why Gurdaspur, the whole of Punjab was on suicidal mission. Are u worried only abt ur Mecca (i.e Qadian) in Gurdaspur?

Have some magnanimity for others in Punjab, dear fren!

209


No... that is not the answer. Water supply to Lahore comes from India... so what? The real thing was the road to Kashmir.

As for Jinnah agreeing to Gurdaspur going to India... you know that the only thing Jinnah had agreed to was the award by the boundary commission. He had no idea that Nehru had managed to get Mountbatten to become a closet Hindu as well.

Now back to the issue of the Boundary force... why wasn't it deployed by Mountbatten despite requests from Jinnah through out the 13th August to 30th August...

Please don't respond with "Jinnah was part of the meeting to disband it on the 29th"... it was disbanded- as I have pointed out- precisely because it was never deployed.