The Qadian Diary — Page 1
1 The Indian subcontinent has long been a crucible of communal tension, but over the past year this unrest has reached new and terrible heights, gradually intensifying as the time of the Partition drew closer. The violence which broke out in central Punjab in March of 1947 was yet another sordid episode of this horrifying escalation. Much of these disturbances were the result of the Hindu political class aligning themselves with the Sikhs to terrorise the Muslim population of the Punjab in order to suppress any ambitions the Muslims had of creating their own homeland, even as the latter were growing in the conviction that it was impossible for them to prosper and promote their legitimate interests in an undivided subcontinent. This created an irreconcilable divide between the two communities. On the one side were the Muslims who were increasingly given over to the pursuit of partition and self-autonomy, and on the other the Hindus, who fuelled by a sense of their own power and dominance, had determined themselves to prevent the division of the country and the creation of an independent Muslim state. It was within this highly charged arena that the Radcliffe Commission set the entire Punjab ablaze with communal conflict through the announcement of the boundary award which deter- mined the future borders of East and West Punjab. As a result of this decision, the Punjab became the home of such unspeakable