Sir Evan Jenkins

Sir Evan Meredith Jenkins (1896 to 1985) was the last British Governor of undivided Punjab. He was educated at Rugby School and Balliol College, Oxford, joined the Indian Civil Service in 1920 and served mostly in the Punjab. He was Chief Commissioner of Delhi from 1937 and private secretary to the Viceroy from 1943 to 1946. He took charge of Punjab on 8 April 1946 and held the post until the province was divided in August 1947.

His part in this history is that of the man in charge as the old Punjab broke apart. His letters to the Viceroy are among the main records of how the British administration saw it coming.

Key moments

• 2 to 5 March 1947: Khizar Hayat Tiwana resigned as premier on 2 March. Jenkins refused the Muslim League leader Mamdot's request to form a ministry of one community, warning that it would bring an immediate Sikh rising with Hindu support and, in effect, civil war for possession of Punjab. With the Viceroy's agreement he proclaimed direct rule under Section 93 on 5 March, taking all discretionary power into the governor's hands.
• March 1947: Hindus and Sikhs were killed in the Rawalpindi and Multan divisions, which official correspondence called the Rawalpindi massacre. The historian Tahir Kamran puts the toll at about 3,000, with some 40,000, mostly Sikhs, in refugee camps. He also cites a figure of 2,090 dead for the month.
• March to June 1947: Jenkins preferred an undivided Punjab, judged a plan to split it into regions unworkable, and thought partition could only be imposed by force. By mid-June his view had changed. On 15 June he wrote to the Viceroy that if there was to be ruin anyway, partition seemed "the simpler and perhaps the less bloody form of it".
• June to August 1947: Nisid Hajari reports that Jenkins told Mountbatten he had no doubt the Muslim League approved, and to some degree directed, the burning in Lahore. Hajari adds that Jenkins later said the administration became "politically impotent" once it was clear the British would leave on 15 August. The districts to be covered by the Punjab Boundary Force were fixed after talks between Jenkins, the Commander-in-Chief and the Punjab Partition Committee.
• Up to 2 August 1947: his reports counted 3,753 Hindu and Sikh deaths and 879 Muslim deaths in the province, according to Ishtiaq Ahmed.

Remembered for: governing Punjab through its last and bloodiest year. Historians judge him differently. Kamran calls him an administrator of commendable repute who was at a loss once Section 93 rule began and the province became ungovernable. Ahmed credits him with preventing large-scale killing until he handed over charge in mid-August.