This migration was among the five greatest in history
The Radcliffe Award was a real shocker. It triggered one of the great mass massacres of history. The only rational purpose behind it seemed to be a desire on the part of the outgoing British Raj to provide India a convenient access to the State of Kashmir.
Leonard Mosley in his book titled “The Last Days Of The British Raj” wrote that Radcliffe had later on confessed that he had done great injustice to the Muslims of Gurdaspur.
“The truth is that when I landed in Lahore on June 20, 1947, I felt as though I had landed in the fires of hell. My preoccupation became how to escape from the scorching heat of the city sooner than later. My thinking processes got dulled.”
These words of Radcliffe explain the dimensions of the atrocity that had been committed through the boundary line he had drawn.
His thinking processes could well have been dulled as much by the British bias for India as by the heat of Lahore.
The story of the blood-drenched migration, that accompanied the partition of the sub-continent was absorbingly narrated by the famous historian/biographer Stanley Wolpert in his book “Shameful Flight.” But Wolpert had his own prejudices too to accommodate in his analysis.
As a student of history I feel this migration was among the five greatest in history. The first one in living memory was the Exodus of Jews from Egypt under the leadership of Moses (AS). Then was the enslavement of the Palestinian Jews to the all-conquering Nebuchadnezzar, and their forced migration to Babylon. Then was the flight of the ten lost tribes of Israel from their homeland.
Then had come the migration of Muslims from Makkah to Madina in 622 that changed the course of history.
The migration of Indian Muslims to Pakistan from various parts of the sub-continent, was much more blood-drenched than any ever before. But it had occurred for a cause that cannot but be regarded as a sequel to the mission that had the Divine backing in 622 and that had got transformed into the World’s most dynamic and epoch-making civilization.
Let me admit here that I grew up with this dream of my beloved Pakistan rising from ground zero to become a worthy successor to the State of Madina.
Even my early boyhood was immersed in the boundless energy of the thought that this dream generated.
