Word: punjab
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Sikhs are an offshoot of the Hindu religion; they organized 300 years ago to resist militantly Moslem oppression. The British had used the warlike Sikhs extensively, giving them land and offices, especially in the fertile, predominantly Moslem West Punjab. In consequence, the Moslems hate Sikhs far more than they do Hindus...
There was no fraternization in the Punjab. At Amritsar, on the Indian side of the border, organized gangs of Sikhs had exterminated or driven out the Moslem minority population (150,000). Moslems in Lahore and other Pakistan border regions retaliated against the Hindus and Sikhs there...
Mohamed Ali Jinnah, who had conceived Pakistan in hatred and was now its president and undisputed boss, sent to the West Punjab as governor his faithful follower, the Khan of Momdot. The bland, moonfaced Khan had served four years in the Punjab Legislative Assembly without opening his mouth. When he got to the West Punjab, he acted. With his province literally in flames, the Khan of Momdot relaxed regulations that had restricted the carrying of firearms; he also decreed that every man could wear a sword, provided it was covered...
Some of his subordinates went further. The Moslem deputy commissioner of one of the Western Punjab districts mourned a son killed on the Indian side of the border. Said he to the young Moslems: "You have full liberty to go the limit...
...Just flying over the Punjab today with a landing here & there gives a feeling that terrible things have happened below. The number of smoking villages that can be counted from Ambala up to Lahore must be at least 150. Here & there can be seen a big town like Sialkot and Gujranwala, where charred black districts tell the story that here the property of one entire community was wiped...