Jenkins memorandum on the Punjab disturbances of 1947

Who: Sir Evan Jenkins, Governor of the Punjab, writing to Lord Mountbatten. Mountbatten, who was still Viceroy (the memorandum calls him "the Governor-General", the office he took up on 15 August), had suggested during a visit to Lahore on 20 July that he record the criticisms of his government's handling of the disturbances of 1947 and add his comments. The critics were mainly the Congress, particularly Nehru and Patel, and the Muslim League.

What: The memorandum, dated 4 August 1947 and reproduced in Gurmit Singh's History of Sikh Struggles, vol. I (Appendix 25, pp. 283-295), answers the charges that the British had crushed the disturbances of 1942 but failed in 1947, that officials were callous and incompetent, that the police were partial, and that martial law should have been declared. Jenkins gives two short answers. First, the Punjab faced a struggle between the communities for the power the British were about to abandon, which he calls a "communal war of succession". Second, the critics were themselves participants: Nehru, Patel and Baldev Singh toured the province nominally as members of the Central Government but in fact as communal leaders. He calls Nehru balanced and sensible, but says Baldev Singh "on at least two occasions went in for most violent communal publicity" and that Patel's visit to Gurgaon made Hindus appear the victims of Muslim aggression when "broadly the contrary was the case". He adds that the disturbances were in some degree organised and paid for by persons or bodies directly or indirectly under the control of the Muslim League, the Congress and the Akali party. He notes that the Coalition Ministry under Khizar Hayat Tiwana banned the Muslim League National Guards and the RSS in January 1947, and that the Sikhs had disbanded their Akali Sena about 1940.

He divides the disturbances into three phases:

• 4 to 20 March: rioting in the cities of Lahore, Amritsar, Multan, Rawalpindi, Jullundur and Sialkot, and rural massacres of non-Muslims in the Rawalpindi, Attock, Jhelum and Multan districts;
• 21 March to 9 May: minor incidents, serious burning in Amritsar on 11 to 13 April, and trouble in Gurgaon;
• from 10 May, the "communal war of succession": incendiarism, stabbing and bombing in Lahore and Amritsar, village raiding, and 140 villages burnt in Gurgaon.

His table of casualties to 2 August lists 4,632 killed and 2,573 seriously injured. Killed in cities: Lahore 382, Amritsar 315, Multan 131, Rawalpindi 99, other cities 117. Killed in rural areas, 3,588 in all: Rawalpindi 2,164, Attock 620, Gurgaon 284, Jhelum 210, Amritsar 110, Multan 58, Hoshiarpur 51, Jullundur 47, other districts 44. He calls the figures incomplete, especially for Gurgaon, and gives his opinion that the true number killed was not less than 5,000. Ishtiaq Ahmed, writing in The News, reports the same total as 3,753 Hindus and Sikhs and 879 Muslims.

Where: Written at Government House, Lahore. The violence it counts covers the Punjab from Rawalpindi and Multan in the west to Gurgaon near Delhi.

Why it mattered: It is the Governor's own account, written eleven days before independence, of the violence from March 1947, with a count of the dead. It was written to answer criticism of his own administration, so it is the view of a British official with a stake in the answer. It also records his view of the Sikh leaders: he names Baldev Singh for violent communal publicity and the Akali party among those behind the disturbances, yet writes that of the Punjabis who became Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs the Sikhs alone kept their political independence.