Partition and the 1947 Frontier referendum, 1937–1955

A Congress province in a League subcontinent, 1937–1946

When the first provincial elections under the Government of India Act were held in 1937, the Muslim League did not field a single candidate in the North-West Frontier Province. Sayed Wiqar Ali Shah records that Jinnah toured the province in October 1936 and met little success. [7] From 1937 to 1939 a Congress ministry governed, with Dr Khan Sahib, the elder brother of Abdul Ghaffar Khan (Bacha Khan), as chief minister. It cut into the privileges of the big khans and nawabs, and Shah says that gave the League its first lease of life, because the khans moved into it to protect themselves. [7] Dr Khan Sahib's ministry resigned on 7 November 1939 with the other Congress ministries, and a League ministry under Sardar Aurangzeb Khan held office in the war years. [7] The Khudai Khidmatgar movement behind Dr Khan Sahib is described in Bacha Khan and the Khudai Khidmatgar movement.

The League's recovery began after the Simla Conference of June 1945 broke down over Jinnah's claim to name all the Muslim members of the viceroy's council. Governor Sir George Cunningham reported defections from Congress, and on 16 August 1945 Abdul Qayyum Khan, a former deputy leader of the Congress in the central assembly, wrote to Jinnah that he had decided to join the League. [7] The provincial election of early 1946 tested the change. Naeemullah Khan's Islamabad thesis, written under Shah's supervision, gives the result: Congress 30 of the 50 seats, the League 17 of the 38 Muslim seats (eight of nine in Hazara), the Jamiat-i-Ulema-i-Hind two and the Akali Dal one. [8] Chaudhri Muhammad Ali, a senior Pakistani civil servant who later became prime minister, counts the League's share as 17 of 36 Muslim seats, and presents it as the one province where the League fell short of a majority. [5] Dr Khan Sahib formed a new ministry. Mountbatten's later telegram gives the other figure that matters for what follows: 375,989 valid votes were cast in that last general election. [3]

The Cabinet Mission and the 3 June plan

The Cabinet Mission's statement of 16 May 1946 placed the Frontier in Group B with the Punjab and Sind. The Congress ministry and the Khudai Khidmatgars disliked compulsory grouping. [8] Both Congress and the League accepted the plan with reservations, and on 10 July Nehru said Congress had accepted it only in order to take part in the Constituent Assembly. [8] By April 1947 the Frontier was the awkward case in a partition that was becoming certain. Mountbatten visited the province at the end of the month, and Chaudhri Muhammad Ali writes that the League demonstrations he saw and his talks with the governor, Sir Olaf Caroe, the chief minister and the League leaders, released from jail for the occasion, convinced him that the people had to decide between the rival claims. [5] Mountbatten first leaned towards fresh elections under the governor. Congress refused: in early May Nehru wrote that any proposal "to put an end to a duly constituted Provincial Government having a large majority at its command, and to hold elections as a result of terrorism must be considered a surrender and must be resisted". [5] Naeemullah Khan says Congress warned that it would change its whole attitude towards the British, and the viceroy changed his mind in favour of a referendum. [8]

The statement of 3 June 1947 gave the Frontier its own paragraph. If the whole or any part of the Punjab chose not to join the existing Constituent Assembly, the Frontier would be asked again:

The position of the North-West Frontier Province is exceptional. Two of the three representatives of this Province are already participating in the existing Constituent Assembly. But it is clear, in view of its geographical situation, and other considerations, that, if the whole or any part of the Punjab decides not to join the existing Constituent Assembly, it will be necessary to give the North-West Frontier Province an opportunity to reconsider its position. [2]

The vote was to be of "the electors of the present Legislative Assembly", held under the Governor-General and in consultation with the provincial government. [2] British Baluchistan and the Sylhet district of Assam were also to be asked. [2, 3] The dispute over the governor had become an all-India quarrel. Nehru told the viceroy on 4 June that relations between the ministry and Caroe had steadily worsened, and two days later Mountbatten wrote to Caroe that he must replace him. Lieutenant-General Sir Rob Lockhart took over as acting governor on 26 June. [2, 8]

The demand for a third choice

The plan allowed two answers: join the existing Constituent Assembly, which meant India, or the new one, which meant Pakistan. On 5 June Dr Khan Sahib asked Mountbatten for independent Pathanistan (پښتونستان, Pəx̌tunistān) as a third choice. The viceroy ruled it out. Caroe commented that "reality of case is that Frontier could never stand alone", and Jinnah dismissed the idea. [2] Mountbatten told Congress that a choice of independence for provinces had been dropped from the plan at Nehru's request, and Shah writes that Congress then withdrew its own suggestion for a third option "without the slightest protest". [5, 6] Chaudhri Muhammad Ali gives the League-side reading: the Khan brothers could not refuse a referendum without admitting they lacked a majority, and the slogan of a free Pakhtoonistan was supplied to them by Gandhi. [5] The Khudai Khidmatgar account in Shah's study is different. Bacha Khan felt that Congress had accepted partition without consulting the Frontier, said they had been "thrown to the wolves", and argued that since "India has disowned us" the question should be "Pakhtunistan or Pakistan". [6]

On 18 June he met Jinnah, who told him to join Pakistan first and settle everything inside it by mutual understanding. [6] On 21 June a joint meeting of the Frontier Congress committee, the Khudai Khidmatgars and their affiliated bodies at Bannu heard the facts. In Shah's account it opposed the referendum unanimously and demanded an autonomous Pashtun state with its own constitution. [6] Caroe telegraphed that Bacha Khan announced the decision to boycott at a public meeting in Bannu on the evening of 22 June. [2] On 24 June Bacha Khan put it in writing:

We cannot vote as we want to vote for a free Pathan state. The way this question will be put makes it a communal question, and people will be confused because of this communal approach. [2]

He said Jinnah had refused the Pashtun option while Congress had been willing. [2] On 5 July Gandhi wrote to Bacha Khan that a boycott "would certainly result in a legal victory for Pakistanis" but would be "a moral defeat" for them if the Pashtuns stayed away in a dignified manner. [5]

The vote of 6–17 July 1947

Forty British officers of the Indian Army, under Referendum Commissioner Brigadier J. B. Booth, ran the polling, and about 50,000 troops were in the province, according to Chaudhri Muhammad Ali. [5] Polling ran from 6 to 17 July and the result was released on 20 July. Mountbatten's telegram to the Secretary of State that day gives the official figures: 289,244 valid votes for Pakistan and 2,874 for India, a majority of 286,370. The electorate was 572,798. Valid votes were 50.99 per cent of it, so the Pakistan votes were 50.49 per cent of all electors. [3] The editors of the volume write that the result came "with members of Congress abstaining". [3] Mountbatten noted with satisfaction that there had been no violence and that the result was clear cut. [3]

The official papers give no count by party and no measure of the boycott. The figures allow one comparison. The 292,118 valid votes of July 1947 were about 78 per cent of the 375,989 cast in 1946, which is 83,871 fewer (this is my arithmetic from the two official figures). [3] Chaudhri Muhammad Ali reaches the same ratio from the League's side: only 65 per cent of the electorate had voted in 1946, and on that basis "78 percent had voted for Pakistan", so every part of the future Pakistan had given a positive vote. [5] The Khudai Khidmatgar side reads the same numbers as proof of the boycott. "As we took no part in the referendum", Bacha Khan said, "the Muslim League had no hurdles to cross", and he accused the polling staff of siding with the League. [6] Naeemullah Khan adds that the province had about 3.5 million people, that the tribal agencies and four princely states had no vote, and that the Pakistan Times of 19 July 1947 reported an electoral roll not revised for a long time which included dead people. He also repeats Abdul Wali Khan's later claim that League leaders told him they had cast bogus votes. [8] These claims come at second hand, and no official record in these sources confirms or refutes them.

The tribal areas answer separately

The tribal agencies were outside the referendum. Their jirgas (see the jirga) had spoken earlier, and their answers varied. When Nehru and the Khan brothers toured Waziristan in October 1946, Naeemullah Khan writes, the Wazir maliks shouted that they did not want Hindu rule and recognised neither Congress nor the League. [8] On 15 March 1947 the leading Khyber Afridi maliks told Caroe that they would not deal with the Constituent Assembly's advisory committee, which they regarded as "purely a Hindu body", and that if they wanted to join an exclusively Muslim organisation "they were much closer to Afghanistan", as the governor recorded it. [1] After a jirga at Landi Kotal on 29 April, Mountbatten told Nehru that the Afridis "felt themselves at perfect liberty to come to an accommodation with Afghanistan" if India's successor government did not give them a satisfactory arrangement. [1] The Afridi named rule from Delhi as their objection and Afghanistan as the alternative.

After partition the jirgas turned to Pakistan. The tribal agreements lapsed with British rule. Chaudhri Muhammad Ali says it had no difficulty winning the tribes' goodwill and withdrew troops from Razmak and other posts in Waziristan. [5] Naeemullah Khan, citing Cunningham's diary, says the maliks pledged loyalty to the new state, that Cunningham advised Jinnah on 4 September 1947 to withdraw troops from all but agency headquarters, and that Jinnah promised the tribal jirgas at Bannu in January 1948 and at Peshawar in April 1948 that their allowances and arrangements would stay as long as they remained loyal. A notification of 27 June 1950 brought the territory into Pakistan with effect from 15 August 1947. [8] The wider dispute with Kabul over these areas is in Pashtun history.

The ministry is dismissed, August 1947

The League had wanted Dr Khan Sahib's ministry removed before independence. On 9 July Lockhart told the viceroy that Dr Khan Sahib was "emphatic" that there could be no coalition, because his party "could never work with the Muslim League". [3] Jinnah favoured dismissal, and on 1 August the Pakistan Executive Council asked Mountbatten either to call on the League to form a ministry or to approve Section 93 rule. On 8 August the Secretary of State doubted the constitutionality of either course. Cunningham, who became governor on 13 August, persuaded Jinnah to wait. [3]

On the evening of 13 August Cunningham told Dr Khan Sahib that he would dismiss him only if he insisted on declaring Pathanistan an independent unit or could not satisfy him that he meant to cooperate with the constitution of Pakistan. Dr Khan Sahib said he had no intention of declaring an independent Pathanistan and would give up office if he could not support the final constitution. [3] The next day Cunningham wrote to Mountbatten that there was "no doubt that J. will order the dismissal of the Ministry". [3] An editorial note in the same volume records that Qayyum's ministry replaced Dr Khan Sahib's on 22 August 1947. [3] Naeemullah Khan gives 23 August in one place. [8] Cunningham also recorded a conversation with Qayyum on 14 August in which Qayyum said that "the sooner the dismissal of the Congress ministry the better". [8]

Each side described the act in its own terms. Hamdani writes that Cunningham acted on the Governor-General's advice under Section 51(5), that Section 93 was not available after 14 August, and that the ministry, reduced to 16 members in a house of 39, had lost its majority. [10] The Khudai Khidmatgars called it undemocratic. At Sardaryab on 3 and 4 September 1947 they pledged to take no action that would trouble the central or provincial government, and resolved that the dismissal and the formation of Qayyum's ministry were "undemocratic". [8] Shah, for his part, calls Qayyum notorious for hostility to the Khudai Khidmatgars and says his government began a campaign of intimidation and torture against them. [6]

Imprisonment, the ban and Babra, 1948

Bacha Khan took the oath of allegiance in the Pakistan Constituent Assembly on 23 February 1948. When Jinnah visited the province in April he refused to go to Sardaryab, asked Bacha Khan to come to Peshawar and invited him to join the League. Bacha Khan declined. [6] On 15 June 1948 he was arrested near Kohat and sentenced to three years' rigorous imprisonment. Naeemullah Khan says the charges were sedition and intended collaboration with the Faqir of Ipi. [6, 8] A ban on the Khudai Khidmatgar organisation followed. [6] Naeemullah Khan says the provincial government took powers by ordinance on 8 July 1948 to ban organisations, and that the movement's headquarters at Sardaryab were blown up and the organisation declared unlawful in mid-September. [8]

On 12 August 1948 Khudai Khidmatgar marchers gathered at Babra (بابړه, Bābṟa) in Charsadda district to protest against the arrests. Section 144 was in force. [9] The eyewitness Dost Muhammad told the Express Tribune that the assistant commissioner thought one of the marchers had stabbed him and ordered the police to fire, and that women carrying the Quran were shot. [9] Nobody agrees on the number martyred. Dost Muhammad put the tally at "over six hundred", other accounts at four hundred, and official accounts at "half of that", a phrase the newspaper does not tie to either number. [9] Naeemullah Khan reports that local sources say hundreds were martyred, while the official sources claim fifteen dead and fifty injured. [8] A page on bachakhan.org gives 611 dead and at least 1,200 wounded. [11]

One Unit, 1955

Bacha Khan was released in 1954 after a second sentence, according to Shah, and at once opposed the One Unit scheme, which ended the separate existence of the Frontier Province. [6] The Establishment of West Pakistan Act passed the Constituent Assembly on 30 September 1955 and received the Governor-General's assent on 3 October. It incorporated the governors' provinces of the Punjab, the North-West Frontier and Sind, the Chief Commissioner's province of Baluchistan, the states of Bahawalpur and Khairpur and the Baluchistan States Union, the tribal areas, and the states of Amb, Chitral, Dir and Swat into one province, West Pakistan. [4] The tribal areas and those four states became "special areas" in which provincial and federal laws applied only if the governor, with the Governor-General's approval, so directed. [4] Bacha Khan was arrested again on 16 June 1956. [6]