Extracts from UK High Commissioner Terence Shone writing to the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, 14 October 1947

Transcript

... Muslim League had made it clear that collaboration between them in any Central Government was impracticable; and when the only power which had been able to keep them together (if latterly with ever increasing difficulty) set a date for withdrawal, the two main parties were forced to accept the best arrangement they could get. Neither was satisfied; one at least – the Congress – did not, I feel sure, regard the arrangement as lasting.

20. Painful as it is to say it, I believe it to be true that the two new Dominions were born of antipathy – to use no stronger word – and pressure of circumstances, rather than of desire to forgot the past and face the future in a spirit of mutual co-operation. In the circumstances, as “The Round Table’s” leader writer suggests, it would have been a miracle if they had settled down in peace and amity. From the point of view of the Muslims, the partition of the Punjab cut in twain the very heart of Pakistan. The position there was further complicated by the presence of the third party (the Sikhs) who, though relatively small in numbers, had shown signs of being determined to resist the partition of their community by any means in their power.

They had for long been animated by hatred for the Muslims; and it may be questionable whether their leader in the last Viceroy’s Cabinet, Sardar Baldev Singh, was truly representative of his people. Alternatively, he and/or other Sikh leaders may have accepted partition because there was nothing else for it at the time but rebellion (which they had reason to know would then be ruthlessly put down) but with the ulterior design that if opportunity offered, the Sikhs would somehow or other be brought together again. It is one of the main complaints of the Pakistan Government against the Government of India, in their appeal to H.M. Government and the Dominions, that adequate measures have not been taken to curb and control the Sikhs. There can be no doubt that Sikhs have played a prominent part in the slaughter of Muslims, perhaps even more in the Sikh States than in the East Punjab; and the Sikh refugees who have been moving into that province from, the West Punjab in their tens of thousands, have been moving in convoys, with their animals, vehicles and household effects, in quasi-military order, to settle down on the lands from which the ...