Role of Pir of Golra in Cleansing West Punjab

 بِسۡمِ اللّٰہِ الرَّحۡمٰنِ الرَّحِیۡمِ 

In the Name of Allah, the Rahman, the Merciful

الصلاة والسلام عليك يا سيدي يا رسول الله

The establishment of Pakistan was one of the greatest blessings from Allah to the Muslims in the 20th century. It was also a testament to the brilliance and foresight of the Qaid-i-Azam, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, and those eminent gentlemen under his superb leadership who assisted him in the noble cause.

Credit should especially be given to the spiritual leaders of the Muslims at the time; the Sunni Ulama, the Sufi Mashayikh and Sajjadah Nashins. Men like Pir Jamaat Ali Shah, Pir of Golra Ghulam Muhiuddin Gilani s/o Pir Mehr Ali Shah, Pir of Sial Khwaja Qamaruddin Sialawi, Pir of Sarsina Nitharuddin Ahmad, Pir of Manki Amin ul-Hasanat, Allamah Abd ul-Alim Siddiqi, Allamah Abd ul-Hamid Badayuni, Mawlana Naimuddin Muradabadi and many others.

However, once the movement to establish Pakistan had succeeded, there was still work to be done to ensure its cohesion and future persistence. The areas of West Punjab, Sindh, NWFP and East Bengal were secured for Pakistan. Yet, there were millions of Hindus and Sikhs inhabiting these areas. Their continued presence in Pakistan after its establishment could potentially and likely pose a major threat to the cohesion and persistence of Pakistan. 

Naturally, they could not be expected to remain loyal to a State that was established exclusively for Muslims to fulfill their separate destiny and as a means of deliverance from the tyranny of brute majoritarianism of the Hindu. Thus, any reasonable person would conclude that at that critical juncture in history it was necessary to drive out the millions of non-Muslims from the areas that would compose the future Pakistan to ensure its cohesion and persistence.

Failure to do so would almost certainly have resulted in a dreadful civil war, or at the very least never ending communal strife and riots. The project of Pakistan’s Islamization would surely have been obstructed too—compelling it to be a secular state appeasing every whim and fancy of the large and powerful minorities it would host. The very purpose of Pakistan’s establishment would have been defeated.

With this in mind, the Muslims of West Punjab, especially its northern Potohar region, began a campaign to cleanse the area of Hindus and Sikhs in March 1947—about five months prior to Pakistan and India officially gaining independence. With the presence of lacs of well-armed Hindus and Sikhs concentrated in the city of Rawalpindi it was a tough battle but eventually the Muslims succeeded in cleansing the area. Credit must be given to the Muslim National Guard, the quasi-paramilitary wing of the Muslim League.

If anyone argues that this was all immoral and forbidden from a religious perspective, then know that the Pir of Golra, Ghulam Muhiuddin Gilani—may Allah have mercy on him—spearheaded this movement of ethnic cleansing of Hindus and Sikhs from Potohar through his charismatic influence over the Muslims of the region.

Hence, according to a report written shortly after the 1947 Partition violence, published by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee, the Pir of Golra incited his followers from the countryside to descend upon Rawalpindi and participate in the cleansing of that city of Hindus and Sikhs, “Then a huge Muslim mob from the countryside, incited for attack on Hindu and Sikhs by the Pir of Golra, a Muslim religious head and leader of this area, fell upon the town.” (Muslim League Attack on Sikhs and Hindus in the Punjab 1947, p.78)

Although this report made by the Sikhs in the aftermath of the Partition violence is extremely biased, and much of its account of the violence allegedly perpetrated by Muslims in the Punjab during those days should be considered unreliable information, I believe It is to the credit of the holy Pir of Golra that he incited the ethnic cleansing of Potohar region to help ensure the future cohesion and persistence of Pakistan. 

Tragically, as a consequence of this campaign, the Sikhs in particular reacted viciously in East Punjab, where they butchered hundreds of thousands of innocent Muslims. The number of Muslims killed overall in the Partition violence of Punjab exceeded the combined total of the killings of Hindus and Sikhs.

This is because on the Muslim side in West Punjab the goal was not necessarily to kill non-Muslims but only to drive them out from the area that would come to compose Pakistan, whereas for the furious Sikhs of East Punjab they were only interested in revenge and wanted to kill as many Muslims as they could, rather than merely allow them to flee to Pakistan. 

Some therefore argue that it was wrong for the Muslims to have initiated the violence in 1947, not merely a stance they take based on some moral principle, but also because those Muslims should have anticipated that an equal if not worse fate would be in store for their brethren in Hindu and Sikh dominated areas of Punjab and elsewhere.

But I say that the martyrdom of those hundreds of thousands of Muslims in East Punjab was a necessary sacrifice, and their blood paved the way for the establishment and cohesion of Pakistan. An immense exchange of populations was absolutely necessary to solidify the Muslim majority in Pakistan. Had there been no reaction of the Sikhs in East Punjab, perhaps millions of Muslims in that region would have been content to stay put, thus depriving Pakistan of the needed numbers to cement its foundation. Forcing a mass exodus of Muslims in East Punjab to Pakistan was a positive side effect of the campaign in West Punjab to cleanse it of Hindus and Sikhs.

Before the establishment of Pakistan, the Muslims of Punjab were often saddled with debt owed to ruthless Hindu and Sikh moneylenders. The economic condition of the Muslims was miserable, while Hindus dominated the banking sector and Sikhs disproportionately owned much of the land upon which Muslim peasants toiled for them.

Today, the Republic of India, secular in name only, has become a de facto Hindu Rashtra and Ram Rajya. It is a living nightmare for the hundreds of millions of Muslims who reside within its borders. They are, for all intents and purposes, second class citizens. Kashmir, a Muslim majority state which rightfully belongs to Pakistan, is under the heaviest and one of the most brutal military occupations known to the world.

The principal factor behind the current atmosphere of Islamophobia and Hindu chauvinism in modern-day India is the RSS and its ideology animating the BJP, Modi government. But prior to independence, the RSS was quite active in much of the area that now composes Pakistan. This militant organization since its founding was committed to the extermination of Islam and Muslims from the entirety of the Subcontinent. After the militant Akalis, it was the RSS that played the biggest role in organizing and enacting violence against Muslims in 1947.

The RSS is modeled after fascist parties that emerged in Italy and Germany in the early 20th century. Another such party that emerged prior to the RSS was the Hindu Mahasabha, which was also quite active in pre-Partition Punjab. 

The roots of Hindu communalism and the call for a Hindu Rashtra which sprouted in the Hindu Mahasabha can be traced back to late 19th century Hindu reformism and revivalism, specifically the Arya Samaj sect. Beginning as an intellectual and polemical trend to promote Vedic Hinduism over Islam and Christianity, it rapidly evolved into a political ambition to establish a Hindu religious state in India, in which Muslims would be subjugated and eventually eliminated.

By the grace of Allah, the emergence of the Pakistan Movement in the 1940s effectively thwarted the diabolical project of Hindu Rashtra and Akhand Bharat, delivering at least two-thirds of the Subcontinent’s Muslims from such a subjugation.