Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Gurbachan Singh Talib

127 quotes

“Muslim leaders deliberately spread false and baseless atrocity stories about East Punjab, and incited Muslims everywhere to murder and drive out Hindus and Sikhs.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the history of the Muslim League War on the Hindus and Sikhs of the Punjab in 1947, Amritsar occupies an outstanding position. It was in this city, along with Lahore, though with an intensity even greater than in the latter town, that the most sustained war, lasting for over five months was waged on the Hindus and Sikhs, especially the latter, by the Amritsar Muslims. In the scheme of the Muslim League, Amritsar appears to have been Theatre of War No. 1. ... Amritsar, to use a not inappropriate parallel, became a kind of Stalingrad of this Muslim League-Sikh War.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Amritsar as in Lahore one might rarely come across a Hindu or Sikh policeman, else all the force was Muslim. The Muslim police helped Muslims to collect arms both lethal and firearms and ammunition. Smuggling was done in collusion with the Muslim police who were posted on all strategic points. Storage of arms and petrol, the latter for purposes of quick arson, was done in houses and buildings which were protected from detection by the Muslim police.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The police were not merely neutral in this, but were planning for, leading and aiding the Muslim aggressors.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No one in the whole city ate anything on this night; no one slept a wink. The whole town was ringing with the yells of the attacking Muslims and the defiant shouts of Hindus and Sikhs. Flames were rising and tall buildings were gutted with huge fires. (149)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“During the night, the Hindu and Sikh quarters got hell. Parties of Muslims would go about shouting Pakistan and Islamic slogans, setting fire to Hindu and Sikh houses... Hindus and Sikhs trying to escape from flames were lynched by the mob. A large part of Amritsar was reduced to cinders and rubble in the fires of this night and the one following it. If one stood on the top of a high building in the night, red flames could be seen rising high, spread over large areas, lending a terrible and awful glow to the darkness of the night.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Attacks on Sikhs found anywhere became a feature of the Muslim campaign in Amritsar. Any Sikh found anywhere on the road was attacked and killed. A large number of Sikhs coming from the villages around Amritsar, and many pilgrims coming from outside to visit Darbar Sahib were stabbed by Muslim parties lying in ambush.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Besides the Muslim mobs and assassins, Muslim police shot out of hand any Sikh or Hindu they could lay hands on. Muslim police are known to have gone about prowling of a night, to have sometimes called out of their homes Hindus and Sikhs and to have shot them dead on the spot. This practice they called ‘shikar’ and it was a terror for Hindus and Sikhs.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Muslim police was working with full vigour in implementing its policy of partiality towards Muslims. In the extensive house searches, both in Amritsar town and in the countryside, every semblance of a weapon was taken away from Sikhs-not only spears, but even wood-choppers and knives. Licensed weapons were confiscated so that whole groups of Hindus and Sikhs were left defenceless in time of attack.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Muslim soldiers on duty invariably acted as the Muslim police had so far done. They connived at Muslim mobs setting fire to the city and murdering Hindus and Sikhs, while they were very prompt to arrest any Hindu or Sikh found in any public place, any pretext serving for such action.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Muslims themselves were mostly steel-helmeted, and so could even sally out on Hindus and Sikhs, while Hindus and Sikhs, being unprovided with any such defence, got serious and even fatal injuries from these brickbat showers.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A peace meeting had to be called in Gujranwala on the 11th July at which Muslim League leaders including Mian Iftikharuddin and the Khan of Mamdot made very glib speeches about the virtue of neighbourliness and communal harmony. But the Muslim audiences knew very well that all Muslim League leaders’ peace appeals, from Mr. Jinnah downwards were meant only to do a formality, to fool the Western world and to lull Hindus and Sikhs into a false sense of security. Behind the scenes these very speech-makers were planning riots and organising and financing arson and murder.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the curfew if the Hindus and Sikhs came out, they were arrested, while Muslims went about armed, freely doing whatever mischief they liked. Stabbing of Hindus and Sikhs went on with the police looking on. Hindus’ and Sikhs’ houses were set on fire; even when the culprits who did this were arrested, the police did not take cognizance of the offence. A secret order was issued by Mehar Ghulam Mohammed, Inspector of Police who went from Amritsar, to the Muslim policemen to kill all non-Muslim policemen. Muslim police constables shot dead at sight any Hindu or Sikh.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of the male refugees were butchered or shot dead. The women were sorted. The elderly ones were later butchered, while the younger ones were distributed. Children were murdered by being flung with force on the ground.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In many places Muslim pirs directed these attacks and characterized them as a holy war waged against infidels, that is Hindus and Sikhs.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Attacks on Hindus and Sikhs began all over the district of Jhang near about the 24th August... Hindu and Sikh women finding all hope of succour or safety gone, immolated themselves on funeral pyre to escape dishonour at the hands of Muslims.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the month of November, Hindu and Sikh girls brought by Pathan raiders from Kashmir were sold in the bazars of Jhelum.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here too the curfew operated as everywhere in Pakistan. Muslims were free to move about during curfew hours, to set fire to houses of non-Muslims and to commit murders.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Curfew was imposed, which confined Hindus and Sikhs to their houses while Muslims went about freely, setting fire with police help to Hindu and Sikh houses, killing and looting.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All Sikhs to a man were killed here. Children were not spared. The women immolated themselves to escape dishonour at the hands of the Muslim marauders.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the 3rd September Muslims from about 60 surrounding villages gathered at Jokalian for attack. The number of this mob was about 20,000. The Gurdwara of the place, where Sikhs had collected for shelter, was attacked, and in one hour 800 Sikhs including women and children, were killed. Later almost the entire remaining Sikh population was killed also.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even women and children were not spared, and were ruthlessly cut to pieces.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The turning out of non-Muslims from Sind is very amply illustrative of the naked policy of turning out of Hindus and Sikhs from Pakistan, for no other reason whatever except that they were not Muslims. There was a policy of systematic terrorization of Hindus. Their business premises were looted, their womenfolk molested, and the avenues of normal respectable life entirely closed to them. Thus, through terror and intimidation, within the period of less than a year twelve lakhs out of the fourteen lakhs of Hindus in Sind have been forced to migrate to India.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All these happenings occurred at a time when in India, Mahatma Gandhi undertook his last fast to get better treatment for the Indian Muslims. That was the response in Pakistan to the Mahatma's gesture, and the faithfully carrying out of the Mahatma's instructions by Hindus and Sikhs. Exactly when Delhi was being made safe for Muslims, in Karachi 800 Sikhs were massacred, and all Hindus looted and despoiled, had to move into refugee camps.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pakistan propagandists, in order to hide the shameful crimes of the Muslim League leaders, a part of whose programme it was to carve out a purely Muslim State and to eliminate religious minorities from it, have put forth a mischievous piece of propaganda that Sikhs (and by implication Hindus as well) left Pakistan by a design. Mat this ‘Design’ could have been passes ordinary human comprehension.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Muslim League leaders had long advocated exchange of population between Muslim and non-Muslim India. All those who advocated the establishment of a Muslim State also advocated as its necessary corollary the exchange of population... Though, it may be said here that this exchange was no real exchange-it was all the driving out of non-Muslims from Muslim majority zones, while Muslims, except for the isolated case of Bihar, where the Hindu riots were ruthlessly suppressed by the Congress Hindu Government and Pt. Nehru, everywhere were safe. (216)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In reality, such fantastic things are being said by Pakistan only to cover up their own conspiracy and crimes against Hindus and Sikhs, whom they persecuted, harassed and with murder, rape, arson and loot drove out of Pakistan. Here are a few grounds for believing that Sikhs and Hindus left Pakistan under very great duress, and that they were extremely unhappy to do so, as this coming away lost to them all that was precious to them in the material and spiritual way.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Tribune: 8-8-47. Mahatma Gandhi advised Congressmen who met him at the residence of Mrs. Rameshwari Nehru at Lahore on 6-8-47 that they should die with dying Lahore.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sikh history and the dearest association of the Sikhs are enshrined in these places. To think that Sikhs and Hindus would leave en masse all that has been mentioned above, if it had been possible for them to retain these, is fantastic nonsense, worthy only of the mendacions propagandists of Pakistan.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is obvious from the foregoing that while the Muslim League had its ‘plan’ of elimination of minorities, the Sikhs and Hindus retaliated in the face of the inhuman attacks on their coreligionists. To talk of a ‘plan’ with regard either to the Sikhs or Hindus is fantastic; more probably deliberate falsehood.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Here follow unprintable details of rape and brutality to these helpless women at the bands of Pakistan Military and Muslim goondas.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A British Officer of the M. E. O. of West Punjab reported (September, 1947) that at a place near Sheikhupura he was called to rescue a Hindu girl, who had been carried away by Muslim National Guards. He found the girl in a hut with 4 of her captors, who had raped and cut off her breasts and were now frying them. He shot the lot.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The evidence of the associates of the Khan (Iftikhar Hussain Khan Mamdot) in the Punjab Muslim League revealed that funds had been spent on the purchase of arms, in 1946 and 1947, for attack on non-Muslims in the Punjab. (p. 445)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“For example, one report which appeared in The Statesman of April 15, 1947 narrates an event that took place in village Thoha Khalsa of Rawalpindi District. It is a story of tears and shame and also of great sacrifice and heroism. The story tells us how the Hindu-Sikh population of this tiny village was attacked by 3000-strong armed Muslims, how badly outweaponed and outnumbered, the beseiged had to surrender, but how their women numbering 90 in order to “evade inglorious surrender” and save their honour jumped into a well “following the example of Indian women of by-gone days.” Only three of them were saved. “There was not enough water in the well to drown them all,” the report adds. The author also gives an 85-page long “list of atrocities,” date by date and region by region, that took place during the months from mid-December 1946 to the end of August 1947. And these represent only “a small fraction of what really happened,” and they have to be multiplied “a hundred-fold or more… to get the right proportions,” the author says.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The book belongs to the time when Hindus and Sikhs were spoken of in one breath indistinguishably and it was taken for granted that they were one and that they had suffered and striven together. Its approach is very different from the one which had continued to be canvassed for over half a century even before this book was written and which has also continued to be in vogue during the -whole post-Independence era. Now for a century the Sikhs have been told by the controllers of Akali politics and by neo-Akali writers that the Sikhs are not Hindus, that instead of deriving from Hindu Advaita, Hindu incarnation, Hindu theory of karma and rebirth, Hindu Moksha, Sikhism has grown in revolt against Hindu polytheism, Hindu idolatry, Hindu caste-system and Hindu Brahmanism. And many Akali scholars have been re-interpreting their scriptures and re-writing their history in the light of this new understanding of Sikhism. The early inspiration was provided by Christian missionaries and British officials like Macauliffe, but it was internalized by many Akali scholars. While Kahan Singh of Nabha said at the end of the last century that Sikhs were not Hindus, some neo-Akali writers now take pride in saying that they are some kind of Muslims.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“V.S. Naipaul, in his recent book, India: A Million Mutinies Now, provides some intimate glimpses into the minds of some of the actors in the Punjab tragedy. He tells us of an interview which he heard on the British Radio and which Bhindranwale had given from the premises of the Golden Temple undergoing fortification just before the Blue Star Operation: in this interview, Bhindranwale had said that Sikhism “was a revealed religion; and the Sikhs were people of the Book.” Naipaul says that he was “struck then by the attempt to equate Sikhism with Christianity; to separate it from its speculative Hindu aspects, even from its guiding idea of salvation as union with God and freedom from transmigration.” But at that time, he thought that it was merely “an attempt, by a man intellectually far away, to make his cause more acceptable to his foreign interviewer.” He did not realize that the attempt to give a Semitic rendering to their religions is an old one and is not limited to Sikhism alone, nor to men “intellectually far away.” It has very much to do with the circumstances in which the world came to be dominated by people of Semitic religions. During this period, monolatry, prophetism, revelation - concepts of little spiritual validity or worth - acquired a great political clout and social prestige and these began to be adopted by many subject people. They wanted their religions to look like the Semitic ones with a single God, a Revelation, a Prophet or Saviour, and a single Church or Ummah.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Muslim League propaganda has sought to blame the Punjab happenings of 1947 on the Sikhs and in a secondary degree on the Hindus. A distorted and fragmentary picture, drawn up with completely bare-faced lying, has been presented to the world of a Sikh “Plan” to attack and drive out Muslims from the Punjab. And for a time a part of the world swallowed the lie, and the Sikhs got an unenviable reputation. But the pendulum of opinion slowly swung round in the right direction, and the Sikh name now has been fairly cleared of the supposed crime of a “Plan” against Muslims. That the Sikh (and Hindu) attack on the Muslims in East Punjab was retaliation under terrible and unbearable provocation is now admitted to be a fact by all impartial people; though it is not known everywhere of what horrible nature, of what prolonged duration and diabolical character was the provocation offered to Sikhs by Muslims over a period of several agonizing months-beginning from December, 1946. There was a war unleashed by the Muslim population of the Punjab to cow down Sikhs, and as a means to that, to carry on among them a total campaign of murder, arson, loot and abduction of women. Sikhs passed through the experience of this war as a people for months; and not thousands, but millions of them were forced to quit their homes for safety in the process. Without a clear knowledge of this part of the story a just and balanced view of the situation cannot be formed.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The details of atrocities committed on Sikhs and Hindus given in these pages are not full or even a fairly large proportion of what actually befell. They are only representative episodes of what happened in a few villages and towns all over West Punjab and other West Pakistan areas. Imagine such things happening in thousands upon thousands of villages and hundreds of towns, and you will then be able to take in the proportions somewhat close to what the reality was-which, in the last analysis must, however, remain inexpressible in its full horror. The facts drawn upon are statements of sufferers of these horrors, recorded from complaints made to the authorities, from reliable press reports and from statements recorded with scrupulous fidelity and signed by those who made them, in the refugee camps in East Punjab.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a significant fact that while in India, the Government discourages communal groups and parties, in Pakistan no group or parties other than communal are encouraged. A Pakistan Peoples’ Congress is inconceivable. When the Hindu leaders of Sind planned the establishment of a political party which might draw its membership from people belonging to various religions, the reply of the Pakistan Government was characteristic. The Hindus of Sind, (such of them as are still there) might have a Hindu Party, but not one which Muslims also might join. In the Muslim State of Pakistan, no Muslim may join any organization other than a purely Muslim one. It is such an attitude which bred the riots of 1946 and 1947-Calcutta, Noakhali, N.-W. F. P., the Punjab, Sind and Bahawalpur.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Pakistan, as has been told above, was originally conceived to comprise only the North-Western areas of the Punjab, Sind, Kashmir, the N.-W. Frontier Province and Baluchistan. But in a later concept of the thing, issued in the form of a revised version of the original scheme, it was devised to comprise, besides the areas originally ear-marked for it, also Assam and Bengal in the East, and Hyderabad and Malabar in the South. In addition to these extensive strongholds of Muslim power in the North-West, in the East and the South, beleaguering non-Muslim India from all strategic points, were also to be several smaller though by no means too small, Muslim pockets, studded all over the country-one in the United Provinces, one in the heart of Rajputana and another still in Bihar. Thus, the Muslims of all India, and not only those of the Muslim majority areas, were to have independent countries of their own, parcelling out India into so many new Muslim-dominated States.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Rehmat Ali, whatever else he might be, has been quite fertile in the devising of catching, though somewhat megalomaniac names. Besides Pakistan, he has been responsible for the concept of India as Dinia, a cleverly suggestive anagram. Dinia would be the continent which, if not at the moment the home of an Islamic State, was such in immediate conception, waiting to be converted and subordinated to Islam through the proselytising and conquering zeal of its sons. Bengal and Assam, conceived as a joint Muslim-majority area by a logic partial to Muslim reasoning, was rechristened by Rehmat Ali Bang-i-Islam or Bangistan, redolent of the Feudal Moghal name of Bengal, Bangush, which has been offensive to the Hindu, suffering for centuries under the hell of the Muslim. The Muslim Homelands parcelled out of Bihar, the U. P. and Rajputana (the Ajmer area, where is the shrine of the great Muslim Saint, Khawaja Muinuddin Chisti) were to be called respectively Faruquistan, Haideristan and Muinistan. Hyderabad, ruled over by a Muslim Prince, with its 86% Hindu population, was to be called Osmanistan, after the name of the present Nizam; and the Moplah tracts of Malabar were named Moplistan. There would, besides, be areas known as Safistan and Nasaristan. On the map of India (or Dinia) as drawn by Rehmat Ali, non-Muslim areas make unimpressive, miserable patches, interspersed on all sides with Muslim states, born out of conflict with Hindu India, and pursuing a set policy of converting, conquering and amalgamating this Hindu India into themselves.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, when the Muslim Leaguers did actually come to establish a Government of their own on August 15, 1947, they drove the non-Muslim population out of their country with scant ceremony-by a campaign of pillage, murder, rape and arson. This method effected the exchange desired much quicker and in a more thorough way than could be done by any human legislation. As a matter of fact, the driving out of minorities had begun as early as November, 1946 with Noakhali, when the whole of Northern India was flooded with destitutes begging for a morsel or a piece of cloth to cover their shivering bodies. Later this was effected in December, 1946 and January, 1947 in the Hazara District of the N.-W. Frontier Province, when Sikhs and Hindus had to flee for dear life into the Punjab. And then came March, 1947 with its horrors. August, 1947 let loose a vast flood of persecution of millions. So, the Muslim scheme was being translated into historic fact to the letter.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To return now for a while to Rehmat Ali, whose pamphlets provided the germ of the Pakistan idea, and the Muslim League Plans and such bodies as the Muslim National Guards, which were subsidiary to it. Rehmat Ali had the dream of reviving the old Muslim glory. His ultimate vision was of a Muslim India or Dinia, over which Islam must rule in its traditional manner. The areas carved out for Muslims in the midst of Hindu India mentioned above, were called by Rehmat Ali. ‘footholds’. Footholds from which presumably the Muslims were to plan expansion into the heart of the neighbouring non-Muslim areas, and to link up with one another, for tightening up their stranglehold in these non-Muslim areas. Jinnah’s own abortive proposals for a ‘corridor’ to link up Eastern and Western Pakistan was somewhat of this nature. Have an area running all over Northern India, cutting India into two-and plan for the rest from this advantageous position.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Still more important and more dangerous was the Muslim National Guards, which by the bye, is now converted into the Pakistan National Guards. The Muslim National Guards did not owe any formal allegiance to the Muslim League, though it had the same flag as the Muslim League had. It is well-known that the National Guards was the secret arm of the Muslim League. Its membership was secret and it had its own centres and headquarters, where its members received military training and such instruction as would make them affective in times of rioting, such as using the lathi, the spear and the knife. The Unit Commander of the Muslim National Guards was known as Salar, over whom were higher officers, but all functioning secretly and with clearly such instructions as would make them formidable in rioting against unarmed non-Muslims populations. When in January, 1947 the Lahore office of the Muslim National Guards was raided by the Punjab police, a good deal of Military equipment including steel helmets ant badges were recovered. The National Guards had their own jeeps and lorries, which helped them in swift mobility for attack on Hindu and Sikh localities, in sniping and stabbing lonely passers-by and in carrying away loot. One of the articles the Muslim National Guards prized and stored was petrol, which would be used not only as fuel in transport, but as an excellent means of incendiarism on a large and devastating scale. This use of it the Muslims of the Punjab, and earlier of Bengal made very thoroughly and effectively, and hundreds of burnt town and villages in the two provinces are tragic evidence of how thorough the preparations of the Muslim League had been for its war on Hindus and Sikhs.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Muslim League, therefore, had this two-pronged thrust to make in its assault on the non-Muslims of the Muslim majority areas. In the first place it was preaching its two-nation theory and its uncompromising opposition to the Hindus, and in the Punjab, to the Sikhs as well.... Secondly, the Muslim League had been preparing the Muslims physically and militarily for such a fight, which when it came, the Hindus and Sikhs were caught unawares, and suffered heavily in the dead and in the injured, in women abducted and dishonoured, in property looted and houses and religious and educational places burnt. Such retaliation as came from the Hindus and Sikhs was only belated, and after the Muslim onslaught was becoming continuous and a threat to their very existence. Before August, 1947 such retaliation wherever it came, it even served the purpose of the Muslim League, for it created that atmosphere of a civil war in India, which the Muslim League found necessary for the furtherance of its programme and policy. It could trot out atrocity stories and incite Muslims elsewhere to fall upon Hindus and Sikhs, as they actually did in the N.-W. Frontier Province in December, 1946, and January, 1947. Such was the aim and method of the Muslim League.”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In all these and other places Hindus and Sikhs were killed, their houses looted and burnt down, Gurdwaras and/or Hindu temples desecrated, Hindu and Sikh evacuees from places of danger waylaid and attacked and the entire Hindu and Sikh population forced to seek refuge in the Punjab. As, however, the numbers involved were not very large, and moreover, neither the Frontier Congress Government nor the Congress-Panthic-Unionist Coalition Government of the Punjab wanted to excite the Hindus and Sikhs of the Punjab, this serious campaign of extermination against the Hindu and Sikh minorities was given the minimum of publicity, and the general public never had a notion of the serious magnitude or import of what was happening, or that another Noakhali was being enacted at the other extreme of India. The features of Noakhali, or for the matter of that, of all Muslim attacks on minorities, were repeated here-mass murder, looting, burning, desecration, collusion between the police and officials and the marauders, with the Muslim League working as the guiding hand in pursuance of its Direct Action Programme, behind what was happening. (54-55)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Muslim National Guards recruitment proceeded with very increased speed during all the months after the Direct Action Resolution of the Muslim League was passed. So great and ubiquitous was the organisation of the League Private Army, the Muslim National Guards, that every Muslim mohalla, every small town, sometimes every considerable village, had its own National Guard contingent and its commander, called Salar. One would be surprised to find the organization existing very often in unlikely and out-of-the-way places. The Guard collected arms and petrol-almost everywhere. They received secret instructions from head-quarters, and had a quasi-military, fascist kind of organization, with the rule of implicit obedience to the orders of the leader. (57)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“That this estimate of the real character of the movement was a mistake, was soon made evident by certain ugly incidents, which must have shocked those who thought that the proverbial leopard of the Muslim League had changed his spots. The League which had to its credit several years’ campaign of hate, of the two-nation theory, of its Direct Action, Calcutta, Noakhali and the N.-W. F. P. attacks on the minorities, could not transform its character formed all through its above mentioned activities over years. In the Punjab Agitation the usual slogans raised by the League crowds were: ‘Lar ke lenge Pakistan’; ‘Khun se lenge Pakistan’; ‘Dena hoga Pakistan’; ‘Leke rahenge Pakistan’ etc. All these slogans, as the Sikh leaders rightly pointed out, were really attacks directed against the Hindu and Sikh minorities, who to a man were opposed to the establishment of the Islamic State of Pakistan, and to enslave whom to the rule of the Muslim-majority this state was sought to be established. The Sikh leaders felt deeply perturbed over the growing strength of the League Agitation, and over the week-kneed and pusillanimous attitude with which the Punjab Government was dealing with this movement of extremely dangerous potentialities. (60)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Left to themselves, Hindus and Sikhs, although they reeled under the first unexpected blow in the first and second weeks of March, yet they would have rallied and retaliated, for the Sikh has never taken beating for long. But the Sikhs and Hindus were helpless against police and official backing of the Muslims and for the moment could at best defend themselves in a place like Amritsar where they were not heavily outnumbered by Muslims. In other places, where they were outnumbered, the Muslims rained destruction on them-month after month. Such retaliation as came, and as has been hinted at by Chief Secretary Akhtar Hussain in his report quoted above, came towards August, when with the nearness of partition the stranglehold of Muslim police and officials began to loosen on the Eastern districts. But just then this stranglehold was complete from Lahore westwards, and from there it became total mass murder and driving out of Hindus and Sikhs, with looting and abduction on a scale horrible to contemplate. (71)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The district of Amritsar, in which Hindus and Sikhs received, outside Western Punjab, the severest punishment at Muslim hands in the pre-partition period, had a slight non-Muslim majority in population. While the Muslim population of the district was 46.52%, the Hindus and Sikhs made up 51.46%. But the city of Amritsar itself was, in spite of its intimate Sikh associations, overwhelmingly Muslim in population, which was situated mostly quite deep along the fringe of the city on all four sides. Its nearness to Lahore and the particularly close concert between it and the local Muslim police and officials made it very formidable indeed in the months from March to July, 1947. (74)”
Gurbachan Singh Talib (1911–1986) said by 1986 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source