Kartarpur’s exclusion from India not Cong fault

Vappala Balachandran 
Ex-Special Secy, Cabinet Secretariat

THE print media reported Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s address at a recent function to mark Guru Gobind Singh’s birth anniversary under the headline: ‘PM uses Kartarpur to hit out at Congress’. It said: “A mistake took place in August 1947… An important place of our Guru was only a few kilometres away. But it could not be made part (of India during Partition). The corridor is an effort to reduce the damage.” The media added that the PM attacked the Congress for this lapse. Surprisingly, the text circulated by the Press Information Bureau did not contain these words.

It would appear that Modi is unaware of how India was partitioned. Governor General Lord Mountbatten’s ‘Report on the Last Viceroyalty March 22-August 15, 1947’(1949) would contradict his argument. Modi should also know that India was still a colony when Prime Minister Clement Attlee announced Partition on June 3, 1947, to hive off Muslim-majority districts of Punjab and Bengal, based on the 1941 Census. Kartarpur Sahib was then located in Sialkot district (in Narowal since 1991). Sialkot was among the five districts of Lahore division in Punjab which were to go to Pakistan, besides six of Rawalpindi division. The order had also said that a Boundary Commission would be set up by the Governor General to draw up the lines.

The PM implies that this was Jawaharlal Nehru’s ‘mistake’. He seems to forget that Nehru was only the head of an ‘interim’ government from September 2, 1946, with the official designation as Vice President of the ‘Governor General’s Executive Council’ under the 1935 Act. He did not have full Cabinet powers. The British Government represented by the Viceroy was the decision-maker. The entire responsibility for the zigzag partition process was with Mountbatten and the British army. They need to be blamed, not the Congress leadership under Nehru and Sardar Patel.

Mountbatten had convened a briefing on June 2 as a prelude to Attlee’s announcement. “The eight of us sat around a small table.” They were Nehru, Patel, JB Kripalani (Congress), Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, Abdur Rab Nishtar (Muslim League) and Baldev Singh (Sikhs). Jinnah did not want Punjab partitioned but to be merged with Pakistan. He also wanted a referendum in Bengal. Baldev Singh’s letter of June 3 contained reservations “but generally accepted the Plan”. On the same day, Mountbatten met Giani Kartar Singh, who surprised him by saying that “he would be prepared to see Mr Jinnah and make the best terms he could for those Sikhs who would be in Pakistan.” The Giani had vehemently opposed this on April 18 when Mountbatten had met him along with Baldev Singh and Master Tara Singh.

It is not that the Congress and the Sikh leadership had easily accepted the Partition plans. Mountbatten himself did not want Partition. Since his arrival on March 22, 1947, he had been trying to persuade Jinnah to join and head the interim government, as suggested by Mahatma Gandhi on April 1. But he failed with Jinnah’s “frigid, haughty and disdainful frame of mind” in contrast to Gandhi’s “charm and friendliness”. Jinnah wanted him to hand over power “province by province” and let the provinces choose their country. He did not want Punjab and Bengal partitioned. So did the Sikh leadership till June 1947.

All stakeholders agreed on Sir Cyril Radcliffe as the Chairman of the Boundary Commission, although they initially fought over who should head the same. The parties agreed that demarcation should be made “on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims.” Radcliffe arrived on July 8. He was asked to complete the boundary demarcation by August 15. Mountbatten says that he did not intervene in his work as it was an ‘award’. All parties concerned approached Radcliffe directly to put forth their demands. That did not prevent the Maharaja of Patiala from trying to meet him on July 11 with 10 retired Sikh military officers to plead for the boundary on Punjab. He refused to meet them as a delegation but met the Maharaja.

Mountbatten records that the situation remained critical with belligerent voices being aired even by Baldev Singh and Giani Kartar Singh that they would resist any award which would go against Sikhs’ interest. When he met the Maharaja of Patiala on July 11, he warned him that the Sikhs would be ‘crushed’ by the British Indian Army if they indulged in sabotaging communications, canal systems and headworks, as threatened by Giani Kartar Singh. He visited Lahore on July 20 to reinforce the military measures. On July 22, the Partition Council issued a statement that both future governments had “pledged themselves to accept the awards of the Boundary Commission  whatever these might be; and as soon as these awards were announced to enforce them impartially.” 

Radcliffe signed the award on August 12. That it was unfair on both sides would be clear by his action of demarcating 97 per cent non-Muslim Chittagong Hill Tracts to East Pakistan on the ground that its economic life depended upon East Bengal. The award was kept secret although the new boundaries were to be effective from August 15. Mountbatten exposed his Machiavellian mind very frankly by his admission that he did not release it immediately since there would be serious disturbances preventing the transfer of power on August 14 and 15 as the leaders of both sides would resist its implementation. Also, the Indian side might not attend his banquet and his speech at the Constituent Assembly. Thus, the awards were released only on August 16.

Mountbatten claims that “all members of the Punjab Partition Committee and particularly Sikh member Sardar Swaran Singh, declared that their parties would accept and abide by the decision of the Boundary Commission” in spite of threats to the contrary. However, he admits that violence spiralled out of control on both sides of Punjab despite the presence of “the largest military force ever collected in any country in one area to keep order in peacetime.”