Memoir of the Career of Thomas Edward Rogers [‎50r] (99/118)

and, in the worst case, their lives and property. They had lobbied Congress
to do its best for them and also alerted Muslim centres of influence to their
vulnerability. They had been alarmed by the flare-up at the end of August, 1946
outside the Arya Samaj Hall in Quetta when five Hindus were killed and eleven
others wounded at the hand of Muslims. Hindu organisations (in particular, the
zealous Rashtriya Swayam Sewak Sang) practised lathi-fighting, Sikhs fortified
their gurdwaras, the Hindu railway employees held exercises and, as the birth
of Pakistan grew very close, even the lowly Hindu gardeners and sweepers in
private employ touchingly resolved to the province - to the alarm of their
/v
employers at the threatened breakdown of sanitary arrangements. The Muslim League
was greatly increasing the recruitment of ’guards' and the more fearful members
of the minority communities began to follow the sprinkling of families that had
begun to move away quietly for some months past.
As I look back from time to time at how these growing anxieties and tensions
were sharpened in the middle days of August, 1947 by the horrifying reports which
refugees and other railway travellers brought to Quetta of Sikh and Hindu
massacres of Muslims in the Punjab, I still ask myself what if anything could
f have been done to avoid or contain the terrible killing and burning which was
about to break out in Quetta city. Though the local population and the police
force were very predominantly Muslim and Pakistan's independence had been declared
with a large public parade and ceremony on 14th August^. I was in executive control,
under the responsibility for the province as a whole of Sir Geoffrey Prior as
A.G.G., of the civil authority, including the police, in Quetta district covering
Quetta city. I first describe what happened.
First reports of trouble reached me on Sunday, 17th August as darkness was
falling-this timing being in itself an indication of deliberation in the onset of