Hoshiarpur, 1947
- Ramanjit Singh
Hoshiarpur District had a heavy Muslim presence and some of the villages here have Muslim names such as Talwandi Araian, Bassi Ali Khan, Bassi Babu Khan, Bassi Qazian, Bassi Umar Khan, Haji Khanpur, Kohja, Shaam Chaurasi, Hariana and so on.
You can find the entire list here
People used to live peacefully and one of the villages such as Ahrana Kalan still have old timers who talk about the Rajput Muslim lumberdars, lohars, fakeers and zamindars. In one instance some of the refugees headed to West Punjab from this village actually came back to defend the Hindus and Sikhs from the Jathas who wanted to kill them since they were helping Muslim refugees (link below).
There's also an interesting story about the Punjabi Muslims who stayed in Hoshiarpur and are still living there.
Some of the refugee camps were in Shaam Chaurasi and Nasrala. People in the surrounding villages used to help the kafilas headed to West Punjab during the migration. There is one story that there was an attack on Muslims at Khanaura and the bloodshed lasted for 10-15 days (24:20).
There are several accounts of people helping each other. In the village Dholanwal the Hindu villagers saved their Muslim neighbors. At one point both Hindus and Muslims successfully defended the village from the rioters. When one of the rifleman got tired another one would take his position and fire at the mob trying to enter the village.
J.B. D’Souza was an officer in the Indian Administrative Service. He recounts his view of the mass migrations and killings and the possible effects of delaying the operation for the planned 10 more months. He was part of the civil administration in Hoshiarpur district, Punjab during the time of Partition.
He also mentions that the governments on both sides did not take into account the level of violence and mass migration that would be triggered by Partition. By delaying the Independence for another 10 months, the government could have better planned for dealing with violence or migration by deploying more troops in the province.
1970 interview:
Transcript: http://media.s-asian.cam.ac.uk/pdf/117.pdf
In the village of Sooni (Map), Muslims were first converted to Sikhism and after few days the raiding jathas mercilessly killed almost all of them and abducted their women.
Article: Sense of an ending in Sooni
