The Qadian Diary — Page xv
Foreword In March 1947, the communal violence that had been sweeping across British controlled India, broke out in the Punjab as uncertainty over the future boundaries of the province sparked agitations across sectarian lines. As in Bengal, the violence was especially intense with the Punjab also set to be divided in the mooted partition of the country. Well-organised and motivated militias, often roused and deployed by local power brokers to help further the territorial and political goals of their respective communities, unleashed waves of carnage that historians would go on to describe as a mutual genocide. The situation in the Punjab was made even more complicated as it involved not just Hindu and Muslim communities, but also Sikhs who were determined to keep the entirety of their population together within the same country. As a means to this end, Sikh leaders incited violence in order to maintain or establish their numerical superiority in certain areas of the province. On 17 August, two days after the Partition, the Radcliffe Com- mission formally announced the future borders of the newly inde- pendent states of India and Pakistan. The final boundary, known as the Radcliffe award, demarcated between Indian and Pakistani portions of the Punjab and Bengal according to the religious de- mography of the provinces. However, despite the original mandate of the Commission to determine contiguous majority areas of re- ligious groups, the partition of the two provinces still left millions