THE ARMY SPLITS IN TWO

The division of the army took place amidst much emotional outburst, with regiments being split and trading components. Hindu or Sikh squadrons of cavalry regiments, for example, were sent to new regiments in India while Muslim counterparts were moved to Pakistani regiments. The first native commander-in-chief to-be of the Indian Army, General Cariappa, had had serious misgivings about the British departure and its aftermath and about dividing the Indian Army. He was quoted by Lord Ismay in a letter to Mountbatten as having put forward ‘the amazing suggestion that the Indian Army, with either Nehru or Jinnah as commander-in-chief, should take over power when we left in June 1948.1 [Ismay] at once said that the proposal was not only wholly impractical, but highly dangerous, and that throughout history the rule of the army had always proved tyrannical and incompetent, and that the army must always be servants and not masters.’63

Farley recounts the scene at partition poignantly: ‘Men exchanged presents, sang “Auld Lang Syne”, and swore to remain friends.’ In Delhi, the Hindu and Sikh officers gave a ‘farewell comrades’ party for their Muslim counterparts.

According to General Shahid Hamid, the senior Indian officer, General Cariappa, presented a silver trophy to his Pakistani counterpart and then gave a toast, predicting that: ‘We shall meet each other frequently as the best of friends and in the same spirit of good comradeship that we have had the good fortune to enjoy all these years.’ The senior Pakistani officer, A.M. Raza, replied in kind and they all linked arms and sang ‘For they are all jolly good fellows.’ ‘Three days later, four Muslim officers who had sung that night were among the 150 Pakistani officers and officials, with their families, who were hacked to death by Sikh Jathas (armed lawless gangs) who attacked the train carrying them to Pakistan.’64 Indian General Menezes quotes then Major Agha Mohammad Yahya Khan at the ‘break up’ party at the Staff College in Quetta as saying to Colonel S.D. Varma, the chief instructor: ‘Sir! What are we celebrating? This should be a day of mourning. As a united country, we could have been a strong and powerful nation. Now we will be fighting one another.’65 Prophetic words indeed, from a man who later presided over the

22 CROSSED SWORDS

break-up of an independent Pakistan in December 1971 after a defeat by India.

A ‘Tattered Dawn66 or a ‘Disastrous Twilight’67 ushered in independent Pakistan on 14 August 1947. A day later, on a date selected by numerologists and Hindu holy men to be a good augur, India came into being as an independent dominion. Mountbatten became the governor general of India.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, took over as the first governor general of Pakistan. Shortly thereafter, the same officers who swore eternal friendship would be taking up arms to do battle, while the remaining British officers (some 2,800 of them out of a total of 13,500 British officers in post-war India) would grapple with their sentimental ties to either their Muslim or predominantly Hindu or Sikh units on the one hand and their Crown on the other. Unbeknownst to the political leaders of India and Pakistan, Auchinleck had issued a secret order to all British officers who opted to serve India or Pakistan to stand down in case the two countries went to war.68

The seeds of this conflict were laid in the final map of partition that ceded territory to India in the Punjab which gave it a land bridge to Kashmir, and in the spontaneous and horrific breakdown of civil order that led to attacks on Muslim, Hindu and Sikh caravans and trainloads of refugees moving from their homes to the safety of their respective new country. By the time order was restored in both countries, Pakistan had gained eight million refugees from India and India had to absorb some six million Hindus and Sikhs from the areas that came under Pakistan.69 A 30,000 strong Punjab Boundary Force, set up under command of Major General Thomas W. (Pete) Rees, a veteran commander of Indian troops in Iraq, North Africa, and Burma, proved less than effective at controlling the violence in an area of some 37,500 square miles populated by warring factions of Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus. His headquarters were in Lahore, and under him were Indian officers and troops of different ethnic backgrounds, all trying to put into effect Operation Rail Cross for the refugees seeking a land route into India or Pakistan. This was later augmented by Operation Sea Cross for refugees taking the sea route from Bombay to Karachi.

Under General Rees was Colonel M. Ayub Khan, a Sandhurst commissioned officer, who had recently been ‘sent back’ from a difficult assignment with the Assam Regiment in Burma.70 Reports soon emerged that a train load of Muslim refugees had been slaughtered under his watch in eastern Punjab.

Whether true or not, this created an emotional reaction in the NWFP. His close friend and fellow Sherdil (then 1st Battalion 14th Punjab Regiment and later 5 Punjab Regiment) officer, Colonel M. Zaman Khan (my uncle) heard reports that a group of tribals was preparing one night to attack Ayub Khan’s home in Rawalpindi, where his wife and children were staying. My uncle

IN HISTORY BOUND 2 3

rushed over in the evening and brought Ayub’s family over to his own home.

In the end, there was no attack. But, clearly the emotional storm was brewing, and as news of attacks on Muslim caravans trickled to the north-west, attacks began first on Hindu and Sikh caravans and then, as the accession of Kashmir to Pakistan became uncertain, the tribesmen provided manpower and arms to the battle for Kashmir.

It was in this uncertain climate that Pakistan came into being.

NOTES

1. See, for example, John Keay, In d ia : A H is to r y (HarperCollins, 2000): ‘...there are now grounds to suppose that the d a s a were in fact survivors of an earlier wave of the Indo- European diaspora and were not therefore indigenous. It has also been suggested that

a r y a - d a s a contact may have taken place in Afghanistan before the a r y a reached India,’ p. 24.

A recent study done by Dr Qasim Ayub for the ‘World Genome Project’, at least for NWFP and Balochistan, shows a minimal Aryan gene, with Central Asian and Middle East genes predominant. (Source: Arif Ayub).

2. Sir William Wilson Hunter, A B r i e f H is to r y o f th e I n d ia n P e o p le s (23rd Edition, Oxford, Clarendon Press, United Kingdom, 1903), pp. 40-41.

3. Ibid.

4. Published in the Smithsonian Institution War Background Studies, Number Eighteen (29 April 1944). found out that there are two clans on this mountain descended from a single ancestor, and one is called Jud and the other Janjua [the author’s tribe]....As soon as we stopped in Janjua [territory], Langar Khan [nephew of Malik Hast, the Janjua chieftain] was sent to Malik Hast. He hastened there, convinced him of our good intentions and favour and brought him back that night. He presented a mail-clad horse and paid homage.’ Thus writes the Emperor Babur in B a b u r n a m a : M e m o ir s o f B a b u r , P r in c e a n d E m p e r o r, about his encounter with my ancestors. Translated, edited, and annotated by Wheeler M. Thackston, Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC and Oxford University Press, New York and Oxford (UK), 1996.

8. J.M. Wikele in his P u n j a b i M u s s a l m a n s , reprinted by Book House, Lahore, dwells at some length on the arguments surrounding the origins of the Awans.

9. Ibid., p. 9.

10. Although curiously, a small isolated segment of the Janjua Rajputs has survived in Gujranwala in modern times. Pakistan’s well known civil servant, poet, and journalist, Altaf Hussain ‘Gauhar’ (this being his poetic name) belonged to this Janjua family.

11. Irfan Habib, A n A t la s o f th e M u g h a l E m p ir e (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1982).

Habib notes that the A i n i A k b a r i mentions that Punjabi cavalry horses were seen to be equal to Iraqi horses.

12. William Irvine, T h e A r m y o f th e I n d ia n M o g h u ls (reprint, New Delhi: Eurasia Publishing House, 1962).

2 4 CROSSED SWORDS

13. D.A. Washbrook, ‘Progress and Problems: South Asian Economic and Social History c.

1720-1860,’ M o d e r n A s i a n S tu d ie s , 22,1,1988 refers to the work of B. Stein in documenting the emergence of this ‘military fiscalism’ during the Mughal period that laid the grounds for the relationships forged by the East India Company and later British imperial rulers.

14. Ibid. view of the background to the emergence of the army of the Raj.

23. I n d i a n A r m y , R e c r u i tin g in I n d ia B e fo r e a n d D u r i n g th e W a r o f 1 9 1 4 - 1 8 , cited in Cohen.

24. Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, F o r ty - O n e Y ears in In d ia : F r o m S u b a lte r n to C o m m a n d e r - i n - C h i e f , 2 vols. (New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1987, and London: Richard Bentley and Son), was a highly successful book, that came out in 25 editions in the first year of its publication, including a Braille edition.

25. Ibid., p. 41.

26. Roberts, F o r ty - O n e , Volume 2, p. 442.

27. Cohen, ibid.

28. Conversation with author.

29. J.M. Wikele, P u n j a b i M u s s a l m a n s (reprint Lahore, Pakistan: The Book House), p. 98. Our family provided horses and cavalry soldiers to, among others, the 19th Lancers and Probyn’s Horse.

30. See the excellent study of recruitment patterns and techniques in David Omissi, T h e S e p o y a n d th e R a j: T h e I n d i a n A r m y , 1 8 6 0 - 1 9 4 0 (London: Macmillan, 1994).

31. Ibid., p. 52.

32. Kumkum Srivastava and Vinay Kumar Srivastava, ‘National Consciousness in Punjabi Folksongs,’ G u r u N a n a k J o u r n a l o f S o c io lo g y , Volume 10, Nos. 1 and 2, April and October

39. General Sir Ian Hamilton, who was posted in 1873 to the 92nd Gordon Highlanders in India and served until 1898, describes in some detail in his memoirs, L is te n in g F o r th e D r u m s

(London: Faber and Faber, Mcmxliv) the red light district in Bombay where he was taken soon after his arrival and from which he escaped after being importuned by an Armenian amazon! British commanding officers or their deputies were often sent on ‘recruiting’

missions to the hill country to select women for the officially sanctioned and regulated red light districts attached to regiments. See also Niall Ferguson’s E m p ir e (Basic Books, 2002), p. 181 for a description of cantonments.

40. My uncle Muhammad Afzal Janjua was the senior Indian cadet at Sandhurst when Mohammed Mohammad Ayub Khan, later commander-in-chief and president of Pakistan, arrived there. One of my uncle’s memorable stories was running a 100 meters race against Harold Abrams (who later won the Olympic gold medal in Paris—celebrated in the movie

C h a r io ts o f F ire ) at White City and being allotted the heavily rutted inside track. This

IN HISTORY BOUND 2 5

handicap allowed Abrams to pip him at the tape, he recounted! My elder brother, Asif Nawaz was at Sandhurst in the mid-1950s (at the same time as Gohar Ayub Khan, Asif Afridi, and Aftab Sher Khan), later on becoming the last Sandhurst-commissioned officer to head the Pakistan Army.

41. Farwell, A r m i e s , p. 295. There were instances of British officers who fought these segregationist policies. Indeed, the last club that agreed to admit native officers was the Peshawar club that changed its policy of not admitting natives when the commanding officer of a local cavalry regiment threatened that he would not allow any of his officers to join the club if native officers were not admitted and further he would withdraw the provision of his regimental horses from the Peshawar Vale Hunt!

42. K o i H a i! O r Q u i H e e ! (Anyone there?/) Was the preferred shout from British officers on entering the mess or their own quarters that brought a mini-army of servants to tend to their immediate needs. Some Indian officers found the British officers’ habits difficult to understand. My father-in-law, Lt. Col. J.D. Malik recalled how he would get up early in the morning and wash and shave in the warm water that his batman (orderly) brought in a washbasin. He was astounded when his fellow British tent mate asked: ‘J.D., would you mind if I use the water now?’

43. Farwell, A r m ie s , p. 301.

44. Ibid., p. 97.

45. Edmond Taylor, R ic h e r b y A s ia (New York: Time-Life Books, 1947), p. 100.

46. My father Raja Abdul Ghafoor Khan also joined as a VCO during this period but left soon after, as the youngest son, to look after the family’s interests in our village Chakri Rajgan in Jhelum district.

47. Roger Beaumont, S w o r d o f th e R a j: T h e B r itis h A r m y in I n d ia , 1 7 4 7 - 1 9 4 7 (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1977), p. 174.

48. Among the celebrated POWs in North Africa were A.M. Yahya Khan (later commander-in- chief of the Pakistan Army and president of Pakistan 1969-71) and his fellow Baluchi Abdul Hameed Khan (known as Burmee because of his appearance), and Sahibzada Yaqub Khan.

Yahya Khan recalled in a conversation with the author that he proposed escaping but Yaqub demurred. ‘He wanted to complete learning Italian!’ joked Yahya. So, at one point when their Italian captors became lax, Yahya and Hameed escaped and rejoined their regiment.

Yahya was decorated for his effort. Yaqub Khan who made a reputation as a linguist and diplomat in later life was foreign minister in the governments of General Ziaul Haq, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

49. Shahnawaz was 30 years old and the father of a one-year old son when he left for the war.

He belonged to a military Janjua family of the Potohar plateau and had some sixty relatives in the armed forces. (See Abdullah Malik’s Urdu work H in d u M u s lim S ik h F a s a d a a t a u r P a k is ta n i F a u j k i N a fs ia t: V o lu m e 2 of F a u j a u r P a k is ta n (T h e A r m y a n d P a k is ta n ) , Lahore:

Kausar Publishers, 1988). Kiani, also from the same area, specifically Shakarparian, near modern Islamabad, was a brilliant officer cadet at the Indian Military Academy in Dehra Dun where he won both the sword of honour, awarded to the best all round cadet, and the gold medal for the academically top cadet.

50. M.Z. Kiani, was made a major general in the Indian National Army, his colleagues, Colonel Habib-ur-Rehman and Lt. Col. A.I.S. Dara all were friends of my uncle Brigadier M. Zaman Khan. Habib was the sole survivor of the plane crash in which Subhas Chandra Bose died in Formosa. Dara became legendary as the father of Pakistan field hockey. General Kiani served later as a political agent in Gilgit. Our families stayed in close contact and he gave me a draft of his unpublished manuscript with a view to getting it published in the USA.

51. Kiani, ibid.

52. Major General S. Shahid Hamid, D is a s tr o u s T w ilig h t (London: Leo Cooper with Martin Seeker and Warburg, 1986).

26 CROSSED SWORDS 53. Shahnawaz, however, chose to send his son Mahmood, to Pakistan and married his

daughters to Pakistanis but could not visit his ancestral village of Maira Matore, home of a number of Pakistani army generals, including Tikka Khan and the brothers, Ahmed Jamal and Ahmed Kamal. Mahmood was commissioned in his father’s regiment, 5 Punjab, also known as the Sherdils, and served under my elder brother Asif, also a Sherdil. He fought in the 1965 war, an action that led many Congressites in India to question the patriotism of Shahnawaz Khan. But Nehru stuck with his loyal soldier and retained him as minister.

54. Kiani, ibid.

55. Habib-ur-Rehman, who was given the rank of brigadier in the INA, was the sole survivor of the plane crash in Formosa in which Subhas Chandra Bose died. As a family friend, we used to visit his home in Rawalpindi in the 1950s and 60s. He was burnt over parts of his body, specially his hands and carried the scars of that event till his death in the 1970s.

56. Major General S. Shahid Hamid, D is a s tr o u s T w ilig h t (London: Leo Cooper with Martin Seeker and Warburg, 1986), Appendix VI, p. 324.

57. PAKISTAN was said to be an acronym of Punjab, Afghania, Sindh, Kashmir, and Balochistan, a name coined by a group of Indian Muslim students at Cambridge University, including Chaudhry Rehmat Ali, who has been popularly given authorship of the name. Ironically, he became disillusioned with the idea of Pakistan as it emerged and died and was buried in England. Efforts in late 2005 to exhume and re-inter his remains in Pakistan did not reach fruition.

58. I recall clearly the time he visited my school St. Mary’s in Rawalpindi after he had retired from service and how fondly he spoke with me (a young schoolboy) about my uncle Afzal, who was the first native commanding officer of the Auk’s 1st Punjab Regiment.

59. Hamid, D is a s tr o u s , Appendix VI, p. 326.

66. The Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s take on independence day.

67. Maj. Gen. S. Shahid Hamid’s view of partition.

68. 28 October 1947 letter to UK chiefs of staff from Auchinleck. C. Dasgupta, W a r a n d Pakistan in 1958 also states ‘I would not put him [Ayub] in the highest intellectual class by any means. He was, according to our records, a failure as a commanding officer (lieutenant colonel) on active service and had to be relieved. But in senior post in Pakistan, since that country obtained its independence, he has built himself up a very considerable position, both within the army and in the country. He is a vigorous personality with a reputation for getting things done.’ DO 35/8944 dated 28 October 1958, UK Public Records Office, cited in Roedad Khan’s T h e B r itis h P a p e r s (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2002), p. 47.

A D i f f i c u l t B i r t h

2

This ta ttered daw n is not w h at we longed fo r

- Faiz Ahmed Faiz1

As the witches’ brew of communal conflict was bubbling in the Punjab, fuelled, among others, by the Sikh leader, Master Tara Singh, who vowed to settle issues with his 'kirpan or dagger, the Pakistan Army was being created in a hurry. Mountbatten had rushed through the plans for partition, even sooner than the original plan of June 1948, to 14 August 1947. He announced on 3 June 1947 that the subcontinent would be divided into two dominions by August. Pakistan was to come into being on 14 August with India a day later. This left a gigantic logistical task for the civil and military officials entrusted with the division of forces of the British Indian Army. Accompanying the division of manpower was the division of fixed assets that is the training schools, military production facilities, workshops and documentation of the British Indian Army. Since most of these fixed assets resided in what was to become India, Pakistan was at a severe disadvantage. It had to start almost from scratch: setting up a new capital in Karachi and a new military headquarter in Rawalpindi, at the site of what was till then the headquarter of the British Indian Army’s northern command from where operations in the tribal areas were directed. An interesting counterpoint to this situation on the Indian side is provided by Lt. Gen. L.P. ‘Bogey’ Sen’s view that the

‘Army Headquarter, India, was in a very unhappy state. While Pakistan had established itself in the well-equipped Northern Command Headquarters in Rawalpindi and was able to commence functioning without impediment, its analogue in New Delhi found itself engaged in an accommodation-cum- location battle with Supreme Headquarters’ Additionally, Sen believed that the Muslim director of the civilian Intelligence Bureau had spirited away all valuable files to Pakistan.2

The road to independence for the Pakistan Army was fraught with great difficulty. It lacked officers, especially those with command experience, and was faced with the huge task of transport of personnel and assets from India.

At the time of independence, the British Indian Army was still proceeding with its planned demobilization of forces after the Second World War, with the aim of reducing its strength of emergency commissioned officers from some 8,000 to around 450. A series of selection boards was constituted to assess the individual officers who had been commissioned during the Second World War to decide on who ought to be given regular commissions. Among the officers selected to head these boards was Colonel Ayub Khan.

Meanwhile discussions had begun at the highest levels of the British Indian

Meanwhile discussions had begun at the highest levels of the British Indian