March 16, 2003

THE second 22-page article titled The Partition of the Punjab and of Bengal by O.H.K. Spate, published in the December 1947 issue of the Geographical Journal (not to be confused with Geographical Magazine) was a paper read in a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society held in that month, in London. Spate was introduced by the Chairman as “lecturer in geography at the London School of Economics, and was invited by one of the Muslim groups to help them with their evidence before the Boundary Commission for the Punjab....”

Spate started his paper with a revelation: “I was employed as a technical advisor by a Muslim group, the Ahmadiyya community of Qadian in Gurdaspur District; to them I owe an invaluable professional experience and much personal kindness. It is a sign of their efficiency and intelligence that, of those connected with the affair, they alone showed any appreciation of the fact that a geographer might have something of value to say. I found myself acting in effect as an unofficial adviser to the Muslim League and considered myself...perhaps on an inadequate ground...as an expert witness...once given Pakistan (an important qualification), the Muslim case seemed to me entirely legitimate....”

Excluding the mountainous areas, which were not in dispute, Spate saw the possibility of a tripartite division of the Punjab; (i) the arid country along the Indus; (ii) the central land of the five rivers; (iii) the Delhi doab between the Sutlej and the Jamuna. He observed that the western wing was more closely integrated culturally and historically with the central block than the eastern. But central Punjab was such a unit where most of the canal development lied, and its division could not fail to inflict serious economic damage. If Punjab was to be divided, broad geographical factors suggested a division on or East of the Beas-Sutlej line. The disputed area extended from the Chenab to the East of the Sutlej, and included nearly the half of the population of the province. Spate regretted that what would seem to be geographically a rational division was ruled out by political considerations.

Spate examined the suitability of the Punjab rivers and the local administrative units as boundaries. The only river considered satisfactory as a boundary was one flowing through a deep gorge or through extensive marshes with constant flow of water, without shifting its course, and with few crossing places. Spate remarked that the Muslims showed more sophistication by not proposing river lines as boundaries. In the Punjab, on a balance, the disadvantages seemed to outweigh the advantages, and to ascribe a determining role to the Punjab rivers as ‘natural boundaries’ was obviously a vulgar error.

Between the Ravi and the Beas was a very important tier. In the Bari Doab, Kangra, only 4.8 per cent of the Muslims were undisputed, but the districts of Gurdaspur, Amritsar, Lahore and Montgomery, comprising the richest of Punjab, were all in dispute. Amritsar was 46.5pc Muslim, but the other three had Muslim majorities. Coming to tehsils, only three tehsils West of the Beas-Sutlej had non-Muslim majorities — Pathankot in the North of Gurdaspur; Amritsar and Tarn-Taran in Amritsar district; while the western-most tehsil of Amritsar district, Ajnala, being Muslim. There were four Muslim-majority tehsils East of the Beas-Sutlej, and two where Muslims outnumbered Hindus and Sikhs together. The legitimate area of dispute was in the Bist Doab (between the Beas and the Sutlej) and in the strip East of the Sutlej. The Sikhs had a scattered distribution — it was only in Ludhiana that they were the largest single community, but they were 10pc of the population in eight districts, West of the Beas and Sutlej, where six of them had over 60pc Muslims.

Spate found the terms of reference of the Boundary Commission to be “hopelessly vague”: “To demarcate the boundaries of the two parts of the Punjab on the basis of ascertaining the contiguous majority areas of Muslims and non-Muslims. In doing so, it will also take into account other factors. The inaccurate use of the word ‘demarcate’ is symptomatic of the general vagueness; no one seriously envisaged the learned judges running around the Punjab with theodolites and concrete markers, but as the term was accepted on all hands, I could suffer in silence each time it was used, which was very often.”

The claims of the Congress and the Sikhs were essentially one. The line proposed followed district/tehsil boundaries throughout, beginning with a projection across the Chenab in the North and following the river for the first 100 miles or so of the total length of 300 miles. But further South of Shorkot, it crossed and recrossed the Khanewal-Wazirabad railway six times in 35 miles, and for 10 miles ran down the middle of the single-track line. In the extreme South, the boundary crossed the important Lodhran-Khanewal line and reached within 20 miles of Multan. The comment of Spate was: “After this, it seemed a little pointless when the Congress spokesman criticized the Muslim line for being crossed by railway at six places.”

The Congress defended their proposed boundary as a “natural” one — a third of it was on the Chenab — and stressed that strategically, it was fair both to the Hindus and Muslims. Spate remarked that it was quite absurd. With lack of heavy industry, Pakistan was to depend on supplies coming up the railway from Karachi. For 500 miles, there was a double track up to Lodhran and thereafter, there were only two single-track lines, one by the Indus and the other by the Khanewal-Wazirabad line, which was cut at different places by the Hindus’ proposed boundary. On the Congress-Sikh boundary, Pakistan’s position would have been hopeless from the start, with no depth to defence. On the other hand, on the Muslim line, that rail pattern in East Punjab would have been favourable to India’s dauphins, with immense depth behind it.

At a late stage, a map was submitted by the Congress showing great belts of non-Muslims territory joining East Punjab. Interestingly, Lahore and Chunian tehsils were shown equally divided between the parties, where “the Muslim majority in their half of Lahore was 215,000, the non-Muslims in theirs under 7,000, while in Chunian the respective figures were 86,906 and exactly 1,100!” Similarly, it was wrongly asserted by the Hindus that 1941 census figures for Lahore city were inaccurate. After examining every relevant demographic consideration, Spate concluded that Muslims were not only in majority in the city, but also formed the majority of the stable non-floating population.

The core of the non-Muslim case was economic, stressing the preponderant part played by non-Muslims in the development of trade and industry in central Punjab. In Lahore district, Muslims owned only 78 out of the 186 registered factories; in Lahore city, the Muslim share in banking and insurance was ludicrously small, and non-Muslim traders paid eight times as much sales tax as Muslims traders! The Sikhs based their case on their notable part in the development of the canal colonies, but double-counting in the village returns inflated the figures!

The real question, Spate asked, was whether the economic facts were to override the general population principles, and whether ‘other factors’ were to take precedence over ‘contiguous majority areas’. Spate remarked that the Congress case was based on good old-fashioned imperialist lines, while the Sikh case depended on “a feudal confusion between private property in land and territorial sovereignty.” It was precisely the economic hegemony which gave force and point to the Pakistani contention. But the necessity of avoiding any disruption of the canal systems was largely lost sight of. The Congress-Sikh claim would have split the systems. As Spate put it, “The claim to a line on the Chenab amounted to accepting Pakistan in words but denying it in deeds.”

In Spate’s opinion, the Muslim case was more reasonable and was much better presented technically, “owing largely to the skill and enthusiasm of some members of the Department of Geography, University of the Punjab, who presented a beautiful and very comprehensive series of maps, excellently produced and covering all aspects of the problem.” The Muslim boundary proposed included the southern half of Pathankot tehsil. That would have retained Madhupur Headworks of the Upper Bari Doab Canal. For a few miles, the boundary ran along the Beas, and then followed the crest of the Siwaliks for about 80 miles. As Spate wrote, “This was the only reasonable ‘natural’ boundary proposed, and it was not followed in the Award.” The crest coincided with the watershed.

Near Rupar Headworks, on the great bend of the Sutlej, it turned West, and as far as the Rajputana, the boundary ran parallel to the Sutlej along the Ludhiana-Ferozepore railway and Bikaner Canal. Spate was of the opinion that that could be quite convenient — as a working boundary. He, however, added that the primary motive was strategic, and it should have been advanced to the Patiala state boundary in order to give some cover to the railway. It was quite a good line, technically — certainly better than one along a river — and it secured the practical unity of the canal systems — by allotting them almost entirely to Pakistan. That, Spate thought, was at least as rational as the Congress-Sikh procedure of insisting that they should be divided more or less on a population basis, and then claiming rather more than their share.

The Muslim case rested essentially on population. Leaving aside the area East of the Bist Doab and unavoidably in Amritsar district, the Muslim claim did not go much beyond the limits of contiguous Muslim majority areas. Since, in addition to the Muslim tehsils, East of the Beas-Sutlej, there was practically continuous riverine strip along the Sutlej which was mainly Muslim, and Ludhiana town had a Muslim majority. The calculations, with one or two local exceptions, were made simply on a basis of ‘Muslims versus the Rest’!

Geographically, that would be quite reasonable, since Ambala division was culturally and economically rather distinct from the rest of Punjab — there was no economic dislocation and the integrity of the main canal system was to be preserved. The Muslim claim was legitimate on general geographical grounds, but it did not mean that it should be adopted in the given political situation.

The Radcliffe Award had “tried to balance” the simple Muslim claim on a population basis against economic and social arguments of the other side. Spate wrote, “But I cannot avoid thinking that his Award in the Punjab...leans rather heavily against the Muslims and represents an attempt to appease the Sikhs....” Three important Muslim tehsils West of the Beas-Sutlej were allotted to East Punjab, which had all the upper half of the Upper Bari Doab Canal system, including the greater part of Gurdaspur, “perhaps the one district of the central Punjab where Muslims took precedence in education, general cultural activities and industrial development.”

The actual boundary ran along the Ujh and Ravi (actually along existing local boundaries originally defined by these rivers) to a point about 14 miles North-east of Lahore, where it crossed the Bari Doab between Lahore and Amritsar to the Sutlej, North-east of Ferozepore, and then followed down the river with a very small extension, East of it in the extreme South, to include within Pakistan the Sulemanke Headworks on which the irrigation of Bahawalpur state depended.

Towards the end of the paper, Spate commented on the general situation created by the partition of India. He thought that the actual layout of Pakistan in two blocks, separated by thousands of miles, was unique in the history of state structures. There was a very serious disequilibrium between the two parts, “Eastern Pakistan having about one-seventh of the whole area but four-sevenths of the population, a density of 775 to the square mile against 92 for Western Pakistan.” Spate saw Eastern Pakistan as an enclave in India with negligible military resources of its own, and for him, West Pakistan was strategically very vulnerable, “the more so if Kashmir should become part of the Indian Union.” He felt that the most fundamental of the factors underlying the Pakistan demand was “the feeling of the rising Muslim bourgeoisie that their Hindu counterparts were entrenched with an altogether disproportionate share of wealth and power.” Then, there was a differentiation of economic interest — both Western and Eastern Pakistans were essentially primary producers with markets beyond their borders, or even overseas. Western Pakistan was an area with a sizable food surplus, for in addition to the wheat of Punjab, there was a useful production of irrigated rice in Sind.

Agriculturally, Pakistan was “on the whole in a sounder position than is its great neighbour.” However, the industrial prospects were not bright — textile raw materials were only half the basis for the lighter industries. Moreover, the mineral and power position of Pakistan was weak. There could be undiscovered minerals, but that did not seem likely except for large-scale oil strikes in Sind. The production of coal and oil output were negligible. Balochistan produced about half of the all India output of chromite. Hydro-electricity potentialities in Eastern Pakistan could only be small, and in the West the best sites appeared to be within the Kashmir border.

In a discussion that followed the reading of the paper, a number of geographers — L. Dudley Stamp, Professor of Geography at London School of Economics, Professor C.B. Fawcett, Professor W.G. East, etc — all experts on the subcontinent, participated, asked very relevant questions and made pertinent remarks. Dr Stamp said, “I believe I am right in saying that there was a time when it seemed likely that the Sikh community would join Pakistan rather than the Hindu India”! Further, he observed, “We...know that the development of Punjab has depended very largely on the large-scale perennial canal systems which are only possible with a coordinated and strong government in general control.” Then he asked a prophetic question, “Does Dr Spate think that there can ever be a reorganization in such a way that the canal systems serving Hindu India will be distinct and separate from those serving Pakistan?”

Probably, the only non-geographer present in the meeting, the Imam of the London Mosque, Mushtaq Ahmed Bajwa, made a very interesting revelation: “I want, first, to express the gratitude of the Ahmadiyya community to Dr Spate for proceeding to the Punjab to help us in the preparation of our case.... I may say that we were considering the payment of Pounds 15,000 for the undertaking, but...I found him prepared to do what he could...for nothing...as a labour of love...Qadian...is situated in Gurdaspur District, which is a contiguous Muslim majority area, and according to the terms of reference...ought to have been placed in Pakistan.... The Boundary Award incorporated the whole district of Gurdaspur into India, except one tehsil.... History will, without doubt, regard this incident as an aggression...we and Dr Spate did our duty and we leave it to future historians to judge the justice of our cause.”

Spate replied, “My friend, the Imam flatters me when he suggests that I would have been altogether insensible to Pounds 15,000...had I known it...!”

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