'Memoirs and Recollections of An Officer of the Indian Political Service' [‎72r] (143/156)

- 72 -
provincial police proved powerless or incapable of intervening for they could not be
brought to open fire on their own co-religionists in murder, pillage, arson and rape.
The slaughter was so widespread and so prolonged that even the hastily organised Punjab
Frontier Force composed of troops from the Indian Army still led by their British
Officers, proved a dismal failure. Despite their proud regimental loyalties the men
could not be persuaded to fire on their own countrymen, knowing in most cases only too
well what their own families had suffered at the hands of the other side. At
a conservative estimate, during the first nine months after Independence, ten to twelve
million inhabitants of the Punjab were forced to leave their homes for ever and to flee
to safety from the blood-crazed mobs. During the same period', over 600,000 and maybe
more of these unfortunate people were killed or disappeard. Far as Karachi was
from the epicentre of the killing, nonetheless the ripples even reached the capital.
Train loads of refugees from the north steamed into the city. Many of them carried
Muslim refugees from the trans—frontier regions, but frequently the passengers never
de-trained. They had been murdered at way—side stations and only their corpses arrived.
On one occasion which I recall, a train-load of Sikhs, men, women and children, arrived
under protective guard from the up-country Canal colonies. They were moved in convoy
to a "Gurdwara" in the city preparatory to removal to the docks the next day to embark
on a ship to Bombay. But the news of their arrival got out. That night the "Gurdwara"
was stormed by a mob of infuriated Muslims, themselves refugees from the Eastern Punjab,
many of whose families had been massacred by the ’Sikh Jathas' as they crossed the border
into Pakistan. The local police and the Pakistan military guard in Karachi were either
powerless or reluctant to intervene. The next morning there were no Sikhs left to tell the
tale. What had occurred in the Punjab, in its heyday the richest agricultural and most
viable province of India and the pride of the administration, was a veritable bloodbath.
My wife and family had joined me in Karachi, arriving by air from New Delhi some days
before the partition. They brought with them our two bearers and their families -
Moti Lai, a Hindu who had been with us or my brother’s family since Campbellpur days,
and Hamesh Gul, a Pathan from the Frontier. But the unfortunate Moti Lai was surely
in the wrong place in these difficult times. He was terrified to leave his quarters and
k
go into the town. Such was the feeling at the time that w’s would assuredly have been
lynched. It was obvious that he could not stay on with us. By great good fortune we
were friendly with the RAF Group Captain who commanded the staging post at Mauripur
near Karachi, later Air Chief Marshall Sir Dennis Barnett, GCB. We smuggled Moti Lai
and his family out to the airport, whence they were flown on a routine RAF flight
to New Delhi. In 1976, my wife and I - who were on a conducted tour of India - came
back once again to New Delhi. There Moti Lai, by now a feeble old man, and his son,
came from an outlying shanty town to see us and to pay their respects. A year later
the faithful Moti Lai was dead. We still hear from his son at Christmas time.