Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Punjab, athwart the historic northern invasion route, has long been India's political thermometer. Last week it read "high fever." In Lahore, Amritsar, Rawalpindi and over the intervening countryside, Moslems, Sikhs and Hindus slew and burned in wholesale lawlessness unsurpassed in British India in 90 years...
...Punjab riots ended a period of peace that has been jittery ever since the Moslem League's Mohamed Ali Jinnah spurned participation with the All-India Congress in the Constituent Assembly (TIME, Feb. 10). The bearded, sword-carrying Sikhs sided with the Hindus, eventually exceeded them in uncompromising denunciation of the Moslem cry for Pakistan (a separate Moslem state...
...until the British last week proclaimed "Governor's Rule," and flew in substantial troop reinforcements, did the carnage begin to abate in the Punjab. By then, uncountable hundreds were dead, hundreds more were injured, and thousands of buildings had been smashed or burned. The riots came in a moment of governmental vacuum, after the resignation of Malik Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana's coalition government. The issue was purely and simply Pakistan. The Moslems shouted "Pakistan Zindabad!" (Up with Pakistan!). The Hindus and Sikhs answered back: "Pakistan Murdabad!" (Death to Pakistan!). Then the knives began to flash...
...stooge in the Punjab Province coalition government, Bhim Sen Sachar, abruptly ordered suppression of the League's "National Guard," arrested several prominent Punjab Moslem leaders. Moderate Punjabi Prime Minister Malik Khizar Hayat Khan Tiwana tried to remedy the damage, but the Moslems delightedly courted further arrest. Jinnah screamed "uncalled-for aggression," declared that the League could never join Hindus in a unified Assembly, asked Britain to dissolve the body. The Chamber of Indian Princes also slapped at the Congress Party, indicating that Moslem members might join with Jinnah in opposing Indian unification. The princes were sore at what...
Third Alternative. The British Cabinet Mission had divided India's eleven provinces into three groups for drafting provincial constitutions, and had made it clear last month that each group must vote as a whole on each draft. Group A was incontestably Hindu; Group B lumped Moslem-dominated Punjab and Sind together with the Congress-dominated North-West Frontier; Group C paired Bengal and Assam, where 36 million Moslems live with 34 million non-Moslems. Congress held out for a prov-ince-by-province vote within each group, which would assure it of a dominant voice in eight drafts instead...