From The Past Pages Of Dawn: 1947: Seventy-five years ago: In Delhi today
There remains no extant edition of today’s Dawn, and the excerpt below is taken from the previous day’s issue.
IN his third and last article, Mr Desmond Young gives his considered verdict on the causes of the recent disturbances in Delhi. It carries more weight because, as an editor and as Chief Press Adviser to the Government of India, he earned a reputation for fairmindedness… . [Desmond Young writes] …[F]or days, even weeks before the outbreak, Sikhs … were making reconnaissance of outlying Muslim localities and of Muslim quarters in Old and New Delhi.
…A preliminary campaign of intimidation was also conducted in New Delhi… . One European woman, the wife of a senior official, was told by Sikhs, through the medium of her sweeper, that if she did not get rid of her Muslim servants, she, they and her house would be destroyed together. …In a house where the Muslim servants were actually killed, the Sikh party who killed them knew how many Muslims and how many Hindus there were, counted them out of the servants’ quarters and told the Hindus to stand aside. — Dawn Karachi
Published in Dawn, September 15th, 2022