¹ According to one estimate, about twenty lives were being lost every day in the Indian Punjab. The Guardian, 10 June 1991. The vexing problem of a mutually antagonistic and volatile identity was extremely confusing to the British especially in the closing days of the Raj. The gubernatorial reports, at the most, found tensions and dissensions ‘very confusing’.Google ScholarFor instance, see Report on the Situation in the Punjab for Second Half of September, 1944, L/P&J/5/247, India Office Library and Records; and Sir Jenkins (Governor of Punjab) to Wavell, Lord, 31 May 1946, and Jenkins to Wavell, 14 September 1946, Fortnightly Governor's Reports, L/P&J/5/249, IOL&R.Google Scholar

² Bhutto, Benazir became Prime Minister in December 1988 after a plural electoral verdict which enabled Nawaz Sharif to establish a provincial government in the Punjab. Bhutto's government was dismissed by a presidential order on 6 August 1990, following which the provincial government in the Punjab resigned as well. During these eighteen months, Pakistan experienced a very nerve-racking bipolarization between the centre and the province on almost every policy matter, besides ‘horse trading’ among the legislators. Such a plural system, if allowed to operate with open-mindedness, could have suited the country the most with its built-in checks and balances, but the high-handedness based on personal loyalties in the absence of programme-oriented politicking made it suffer from bi-polarity.Google Scholar

³ In a recent international conference on such Punjab-related themes in Lahore, many speakers urged fellow Punjabis not to shun their own mother-tongue besides reiterating their appeal to make Punjabi a medium of instruction in the schools. For details, see The Daily Jang (London), 4 01 1993.Google Scholar

⁴ It appears that the uneasy majority-minority relationship in India, a historical problem indeed, remains unresolved. While ethnicity may be a similar ‘prop’ for activism, basic differentiation of the community still largely hinges on religious identification. Excepting supra-religious elites, Hindu—Muslim, Hindu—Sikh or caste-based polarization (traditionally viewed as religious identification) keeps on vetoing the evolution of any cross-communal equation. Ethnicity is solidified by religious divide while ethnicity itself does not play any role in this inter-communal dichotomy. Punjabi Hindus and Punjabi Sikhs kill one another the way Bombayites, both Hindu and Muslim, fall upon each other. It is more similar to the contemporary situation in the former Yugoslavia or Northern Ireland. Religion, in other words, still holds the vetoing power. To the leaders of the BJP, VHP and Shiv Sena, regional or lingual commonalities are irrelevant since, to them, Indian nationalism must be redefined as a majoritarian creed with Hinduism providing the touch-stone. To them, Muslims (and other non-Hindus) are non-Indian, as long as they are non-Hindus. See Thackeray, Ball's interview in Time International, 25 01 1993.Google Scholar

⁵ ‘Anger Rising in Bombay. “It's a Pogrom”, The Muslims Say’, International Herald Tribune, 16–17 Jan. 1993; also, ‘Homeless Muslims try to flee Bombay’, The Times, 13 Jan. 1993; and ‘Might vs. Right’, Time International, 18 Jan. 1993.Google Scholar

⁶ For a relevant discussion, see Ali, Imran, ‘The Punjab and the Retardation of Nationalism’, in Low, D. A. (ed.), The Political Inheritance of Pakistan (London, 1991).Google Scholar

⁷ Quite a few writers awoke to the cause of Punjabial during the 1980s, coming to the defence of the province in terms of resistance and revolution. For instance, see Ramay, Hanif, Punjab Ka Muqqaddima (Urdu) (Lahore, 1987).Google Scholar During Benazir Bhutto's premiership, the opposition-led Punjab witnessed a campaign based on slogans like Jaag Punjabi, Jaag (Wake up Punjabi, Wake up!). Some observers have attributed such slogans to Pakistani intelligence agencies trying to destabilize Benazir Bhutto's government. See Lodhi, Maleeha and Hussain, Zahid, ‘The Invisible Government’, The News in The Jang, 30 09 1992.Google Scholar

⁸ The Pakistani polity, like many other developing countries, suffers from elitist exclusivity as the pervasive influence of the feudatory, bureaucratic (both civil and military) and industrial elite monopolizes the decision-making processes and institutions. In an ideological sense, dissensions between the reformist/modernist and traditional elites further play inhibitive roles in the development of a responsive and accountable political system. For a theoretical and historical analysis, see Hussain, Asaf, Elite Politics in an Ideological State. The Case of Pakistan (London, 1979).Google Scholar Alavi feels that in Pakistan, it is the bourgeois elites—the Salariat—who, in collaboration with traditional elites, monopolize the politico—economic institutions. See Alavi, Hamza, ‘Pakistan and Islam: Ethnicity and Ideology’, in Halliday, Fred and Alavi, Hamza (eds), State and Ideology in the Middle East and Pakistan (London, 1987), pp. 64–110.Google Scholar

⁹ For further discussion on the subject, see den Dungen, P. M. H. van, The Punjab Tradition: Influence and Tradition in Nineteenth Century India (London, 1972).Google Scholar

¹⁰ Such significant developments including the settlement of the ‘new’ Punjab, according to a recent study, stemmed from the imperial rationale of the administrators and eventually turned out to be a major retarding factor in the development of a cohesive political tradition. See Ali, Imran, The Punjab Under Imperialism, 1885–1947 (Princeton, 1987). One may easily extend the argument to any part of the sub-continent under the Raj. The British, like other colonials, were in the subcontinent mainly to rule and would certainly not go out of their way to inculcate the political traditions and institutions that could eventually lead them out.Google Scholar

¹¹ On the element of continuity, see Baxter, Craig, ‘The People's Party vs. the Punjab Feudalists’, in Corson, J. Henry et al. (eds), Contemporary Problems of Pakistan (Leiden, 1974), pp. 6–29.Google Scholar

¹² For further details, see Major, Andrew J., ‘The Punjabi Chieftains and the Transition from Sikh to British Rule’, in Low, Political Inheritance.Google Scholar

¹³ Kapur, Krishna, A History of Development of Judiciary in the Punjab, 1884–1926 (Lahore, 1928), p. 26.Google Scholar

¹⁴ Selections from the Public Correspondence for the Affairs of the Punjab, vol. IV (Lahore, 1859), p. 170. It was further observed in the report: ‘The chiefs who remained either with feudal possessions or with independent powers were on our side to a man’.Google ScholarIbid., p. 188.

¹⁵ Such a well-planned policy with clear ‘bias’ for the executive naturally has had its results both for India and Pakistan. The events in Indian Punjab, ‘the roots of Sikh separatism can be traced to the unintended consequences of British rule…. In the latter [Pakistan], political instability has been rooted in the conscious policy of British officials. They determined that the Punjab should become a major centre of army recruitment. In order to legitimize their rule in the region, they bolstered parochial loyalties and the influence of the landowners. These legacies frustrate the foundations of a Pakistani nationalism grounded in the estabishment of a system of Islamic social justice’. Talbot, Ian, ‘British Rule in the Punjab, 1849–1947’, The Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History, XIX, 2, p. 218.Google Scholar

¹⁶ Major, ‘The Punjabi Chieftains’, p. 80.Google Scholar

¹⁷ Latif, S. M., The History of the Panjab: From the Remotest Antiquity to the Present Time (Lahore, 1891), p. 590.Google Scholar

¹⁸ ‘India, Ancient and Modern’, New Englander, 15 (1856), p. 44.Google Scholar

¹⁹ For details, see Malik, Iftikhar H., US-South Asia Relations, 1784–1940: A Historical Perspective (Islamabad, 1987), pp. 42–3.Google Scholar

²⁰ Ikram, S. M., Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan (Lahore, 1969), p. 203.Google Scholar

²¹ For more on its activities, see Amir-ud-Din, Mian, Yaad-i-Ayyam (Urdu) (Lahore, 1983).Google Scholar

²² Husain, Azim, Fazl-i-Husain. A Political Biography (Bombay, 1946), p. 71.Google Scholar

²³ Kalia, Barkat Ram, A History of the Development of the Police in the Punjab, 1849–1905 (Lahore, 1929), p. 18.Google Scholar

²⁴ Husain, , Fazl-i-Husain, p. 77.Google Scholar

²⁵ Ibid.

²⁶ Quoted from Duni Chand, The Ulster of India, in ibid.

²⁷ Rai published his monthly Young India while based in New York at a time when the Ghadrites had come under official scrutiny. An author of a number of valuable works, Rai lived an active, mobile life which came to an end in the anti-Simon Commission agitation in 1927.Google Scholar For his views, see Unhappy India (Calcutta, 1928), his last and massive volume on India written in response to Katherine Mayo's Mother India.Google Scholar Also, Rathore, Naeem Gul, ‘Indian Nationalist Agitation in the United States. A Study of Lai a Lajpat Rai and the India Home Rule League of America, 1914–1920’, Ph.D. dissertation, Columbia University, New York, 1965.Google Scholar

²⁸ Dayal, Har, after a teaching and active career in the USA and Europe as an Indian nationalist, died in Philadelphia in 1939 as a Hindu visionary. See his ‘India in America’, Modern Review, July 1911,Google Scholar and Forty-Four Months in Germany and Turkey (London, 1924). Also, C. Emily Brown, Har Dayal: Hindu Revolutionary and Rationalist (Tucson, 1975).Google Scholar

²⁹ The Ghadr Collection is preserved in the library at the University of California, Berkeley, while the records of official proceedings of the San Francisco trial consisting of more than seventy files are in the federal archives at San Bruno, California. Jane Singh, a researcher in Berkeley, and a descendant from early Punjabi immigrants, organized the first-ever mobile exhibition of the South Asian-Americans in the mid-1980s. There is an immense amount of historiography on the Ghadr movement itself. For instance, see Josh, Sohan Singh, Hindustan Gadar Party: A Short History, 2 vols (New Delhi, 1977–78);Google Scholar and Sareen, Tilak R., Indian Revolutionary Movement Abroad (1905—1927) (New Delhi, 1979).Google Scholar

³⁰ Quite a few passengers on the booked ship were the dependants of some of the Punjabi residents in British Columbia. For more on this, see Johnston, Hugh, The Voyage of the Komagata Maru: The Sikh Challenge to Canada's Colour Bar (Delhi, 1979).Google Scholar

³¹ For a detailed account of the Punjabi migrations to Canada and the United States, the local reaction, the Ghadr interlude and the eventual transformation of the Ghadrites, see Malik, , US-South Asia Relations, pp. 93–258.Google Scholar

³² For official records, see Leigh, M. S., The Punjab and the War (Lahore, 1922), pp. 22–3;Google Scholaralso O'Dwyer, Michael, India As I Knew It: 1885–1925 (London, 1926), pp. 183–8.Google Scholar

³³ For contemporary statistics and policies, see Information Division, Government of Punjab, Statement of Newspapers and Periodicals Published in the Punjab during the Year 1917 (Allahabad, 1917).Google Scholar

³⁴ ‘From 1910–1919 the Punjab was administered by a Lieutenant-Governor who had the assistance of a small Advisory Council of about a dozen people. They were the most loyal, elderly men belonging to the well-to-do class, who had rendered political and administrative services to the British Government and they had no political opinions except those which the British liked. They were not elected because they were brilliant orators, nor because they had attained high degrees. They were elected or nominated for their common sense which they could bring to bear on their country's problems. They were well-to-do people who were in a position to help people, to approach government officials’. Noon, Firoz Khan, From Memory (Lahore, 1966), pp. 83–4.Google Scholar

³⁵ Ibid., p. 89.

³⁶ For more biographical details on Sir Shafi, see Nawaz, Jahan Ara Shah, Father and Daughter (Lahore, 1971).Google Scholar

³⁷ For further details, see ibid.

³⁸ For a comprehensive biography on Ali, Malik Barkat, see Afzal, M. Rafique, Malik Barkat Ali: His Life and Writings (Lahore, 1969).Google Scholar

³⁹ Batalvi, Ashiq Husain, Iqbal Kay Akhiri Do Saal (Urdu) (Lahore, 1961);Google ScholarHamari Qaumi Jido-Jihd, 3 vols (Lahore, 1966, 1968, 1975).Google Scholar

⁴⁰ For more on student politics, see Mirza, Sarfaraz Hussain (ed.), The Punjab Muslim Students Federation: An Annotated Documentary Survey (Lahore, 1978);Google ScholarTasawwur-i- Pakistan say Qarardad-i-Pakistan Tak (Urdu) (Lahore, 1983).Google Scholar

⁴¹ Poullada, Leon B., ‘Contemporary Political Parties in the Punjab’, Master's thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1954, p. 13.Google Scholar

⁴² On the historical interpretation of this viewpoint, see Page, David, The Prelude to Partition: the Indian Muslims and the Imperial System of Control, 1920–1932 (Delhi, 1982), pp. 46–58 and 46–72.Google Scholar

⁴³ Ahmad, Syed Nur, Mian Fazl-i-Husain. A Review of His Life and Work (Lahore, 1936), p. 40.Google ScholarIn a speech before the Punjab Legislative Council in 1923 he claimed to believe in ‘the principle of helping the backward communities irrespective of their religion, be they Muslim, Hindu or Sikh’. Punjab Legislative Council Debates, vol. IV, 15 03 1923, p. 1318.Google Scholar

⁴⁴ For more on Sikandar Hayat, see Malik, Iftikhar H., Sikandar Hayat Khan: A Political Biography (Islamabad, 1985);Google Scholaralso see Ahmad, , Mian Fazl-i-Husain.Google Scholar

⁴⁵ Fazl-i-Husain to Sikandar Hayat, 16 June 1934. For detailed correspondence of Sir Husain, see Ahmad, Waheed (ed.), Diary and Notes of Mian Fazl-i-Husain (Lahore, 1976)Google Scholar; and Letters of Mian Fazl-i-Husain Lahore, 1977)Google Scholar;. For the original papers, see Mian Fazl-i-Husain Collection, MSS. Eur. E. 352 (1–27 vols), IOL&R.

⁴⁶ Sikandar Hayat to Fazl-i-Husain, 27 November 1935. Also, Ahmad, Waheed, Diary and Notes, p. 473.Google Scholar

⁴⁷ The next day he wrote of him: ‘He is out to be popular among Muslims… frequents mosques, says amen to all the popular slogans about mosques, goes to fatiha to the houses of the killed, pays visits to the wounded in hospitals, has cut others out … Muzaffar and Ahmadyar and Shahabuddin by really carrying out the Governor's wishes and thus not allowing his rivals to steal a march over him’, 30 July 1935, in ibid., p. 156.

⁴⁸ Paisa Akhbar, 14 April 1935.Google Scholar

⁴⁹ The Star (Lahore), 2 09 1935.Google Scholar

⁵⁰ He wrote to Sikandar Hayat: ‘Jinnah's move in establishing a Central Parliamentary Board of the League was wrong move, detrimental to the Indian Muslim interest. We have taken the right line … Miscellaneous urbanites like Iqbal, Shuja, Tajuddin, Barkat Ali, have naturally been trying to make something out of it … So the scheme is purely a paper one’. Sikandar Hayat held a similar view as he observed: ‘His activities during the past few weeks, judging from the press reports, are contrary to his professions … If he meddles, he would only be encouraging fissiparous tendencies already painfully discernible in a section of Punjabi Muslims, and might burn his fingers; and in any case, we cannot possibly allow “provincial autonomy” to be tampered with in any sphere, and by anybody, be he a nominee of the powers who have given us the autonomy or a President of the Muslim League or any other association or body’. Fazl-i-Husain to Sikandar Hayat, 6 May 1936; and Sikandar Hayat to Fazl-i-Husain, 1 May 1936.

⁵¹ Barkat Ali to Fazl-i-Husain, 4 April 1936.Google Scholar

⁵² Quoted in Husain, Azim, Fazl-i-Husain, pp. 336–7.Google Scholar

⁵³ Ahmad, Waheed, Diary and Notes, p. 346.Google Scholar

⁵⁴ Ikram, , Modern Muslim India, p. 233.Google Scholar

⁵⁵ For more on this topic, see Afzal, M. Rafique, Guftar-i-Iqbal (Urdu) (Lahore, 1969).Google Scholar

⁵⁶ For a recent study, see Gilmartin, David, Empire and Islam: Punjab and the Making of Pakistan (London, 1988).Google Scholar

⁵⁷ Mirza, Sarfaraz Hussain, Muslim Women's Role in the Pakistan Movement (Lahore, 1969).Google Scholar

⁵⁸ For further details, see Haq, Afzal, Tarikh-i-Ahrar (Urdu) (Lahore, n.d.);Google ScholarMirza, Janbaz, Karvan-i-Ahrar (Urdu), 2 vols (Lahore, 1975);Google ScholarKashmiri, Shorish, Pass-i-Diwar-i-Zindan (Urdu) (Lahore, 1971);Google Scholar and Malik, Ikram Ali, ‘Pakistan Resolution and Unionist Party’, in Yusuf, K. F. et al. (eds), Pakistan Resolution Revisited (Islamabad, 1990). pp. 347–66.Google Scholar

⁵⁹ See Saleemi, Safdar, Khaksar Tehrik Ki Sola Sala Jiddo-Jihd (Urdu) (Lahore, n.d.);Google ScholarMashriqi, Allama, Qaul-i-Faisal (Urdu) (Lahore, 1935);Google ScholarMaulvi Ka Ghalat Mazhab, No. 4 (Urdu) (Lahore, 1937);Google ScholarAl-Islah (Lahore), 20 October 1939 to 15 March 1940; and Malik, Abdullah, Punjab Ki Siyasi Tehrikain (Urdu) (Lahore, 1971). For the British official view on the Khaksars, see John Morton Collection, MSS. Eur. D. 1003, and Indian Police Collection, MSS. Eur. F. 161, IOL&R.Google Scholar

⁶⁰ Such a school includes quite a few famous Western scholars conveniently grouped as the Cambridge school along with some South Asian historians: Brass, Paul, Language, Religion and Politics in North India (Cambridge, 1974);Google ScholarHardy, Peter, The Muslims of British India (Cambridge, 1972);CrossRefGoogle Scholar Page, Prelude to Partition; Robinson, Francis, Separatism Among Indian Muslims. The Politics of the United Provinces' Muslims 1860–1923 (Cambridge, 1974);Google Scholar and Hasan, Mushirul, Nationalism and Communal Politics in India, 1916–1928 (Delhi, 1978).Google Scholar In the context of the Punjab, a recent study claims that it was merely the breakdown of the status quo in the 1940s earlier fiercely maintained by the British in the province that let the trans-territorial forces like the League break the provincial isolationism. See Talbot, Ian, Punjab and the Raj, 1840–1947 Delhi, 1988).Google Scholar

⁶¹ Jalal, Ayesha, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan (Cambridge, 1985).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

⁶² The leading spokesman of this school was Ahmad, Aziz whose Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment (Oxford, 1964)Google Scholarfollowed by Islamic Modernism in India and Pakistan, 1857–1964 (Oxford, 1967) turned out to be pioneering works.Google ScholarAlong with Aziz, K. K., Sayeed, Khalid B. and Malik, Hafeez, Ahmad turned out to be a permeating influence on a generation of scholars like Gail Minault, Barbara Metcalf, Rafiuddin Ahmed and Farzana Shaikh.Google Scholar

⁶³ For instance, see Singh, Anita Inder, The Origins of the Partition of India, 1936–1947 (Delhi, 1987).Google Scholar

⁶⁴ Gilmartin, David, Islam and Imperialism (London, 1989).Google Scholar

⁶⁵ Shaikh, Farzana, Community and Consensus in Islam. Muslim Representation in Colonial India, 1860–1947 (Cambridge, 1989).Google Scholar