But it was Nehru, not Patel, who played the conciliator and the voice
of reason, arguing against defining India as ‘Hindu’, touring riot-affected
areas and intervening in public disorder in person. ‘Communal’ disorder
cast a long shadow into the early years of the newly-independent state.
There was a continuation of transfer of populations between India and
Pakistan after partition (about nine million Sikhs and Hindus entered
India, five million from West Pakistan and four from East Pakistan, while
six million Muslims left India for Pakistan, in the period 1946–51).
Atrocity stories spread by refugees increased tensions and the desire
for vengeance, and helped to accelerate violence; casualties from the period
of partition and post-partition violence were estimated at between
200,000 and 800,000.^2 ‘Spontaneity’ of popular anger – often used as an
explanation of the intensity of such violence – was not always an accurate
explanation. Desire for the property of the departing community, whose
departure ought therefore to be sped up, was also an important motiva-
tion. Organised violence was also an extremely important contributory
factor in the carnage. When the partition of Punjab had been mooted,
Sikh violence on Muslims had been organised, among others, by the leader
of the militant Sikh organisation, the Akalis, Tara Singh, who had only
recently been a member of the Viceroy’s Executive Council during the
war (he was eventually arrested in February 1949). After partition,
Hindu fundamentalist paramilitary organisations such as the Rashtriya
Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) were involved in organised killings – in
September 1947 in Delhi, Sikhs and Hindus organised large-scale killings
of Muslims. In Pakistan, it was widely (and not implausibly) believed
that despite the sincerity of Gandhi and Nehru in attempting to stop
violence against Muslims in India, Patel in the Congress, and right-wing
Hindu opinion outside it, had welcomed or encouraged anti-Muslim
violence.
The situation left Nehru extremely demoralised. ‘I feel particularly
helpless,’ he wrote to Mountbatten, in a letter that he could think of no
better reason for writing than ‘to unburden my mind a little’.^3 He noted
that the army had resorted to firing indiscriminately at refugees as large-
scale violence continued. ‘[T]here was still an odour of death, a smell of
blood and of burning human flesh,’ he wrote to Mountbatten from Lahore,
describing what he had seen in the Punjab in the course of his tour with
Liaquat Ali Khan, now the Pakistani prime minister. ‘I am sick with
horror.’^4 (Nehru’s personal ties with the Mountbattens, and particularly170 CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55